13.2 Social Influence: Controlling People

Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old Pakistani girl who stood up for women’s rights despite being hunted by the Taliban, was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

WANG LEI/XINHUA/LANDOV

Those of us who grew up watching cartoons on Saturday mornings have usually thought a bit about which of the standard superpowers we’d most like to have. Super strength and super speed have obvious benefits, invisibility and X-ray vision could be interesting as well as lucrative, and there’s a lot to be said for flying. But when it comes right down to it, the ability to control other people would probably be the most useful. After all, who needs to lift a tractor or catch a bad guy if someone else can be convinced to do it? The things we want from life—gourmet food, interesting jobs, big houses, fancy cars—can be given to us by others, and the things we want most—loving families, loyal friends, admiring children, appreciative employers—cannot be had in any other way.

Social influence is the ability to control another person’s behavior (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). But how does it work? If you want someone to give you their time, money, allegiance, or affection, you’d be wise to consider first what it is they want. People have three basic motivations that make them susceptible to social influence (Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2010; Fiske, 2010). First, people are motivated to experience pleasure and to avoid experiencing pain (the hedonic motive). Second, people are motivated to be accepted and to avoid being rejected (the approval motive). Third, people are motivated to believe what is right and to avoid believing what is wrong (the accuracy motive). As you will see, most social influence attempts appeal to one or more of these motives.

The Hedonic Motive: Pleasure Is Better Than Pain

Other people are the source of most of our rewards—and, it appears, most of our punishments. In a 2010 survey that asked Americans to identify the things that annoyed them most, 19 of the top 20 annoyances were caused by other people. The remaining annoyance was caused by other people’s dogs.

If there is an animal that prefers pain to pleasure it must be very good at hiding because no one has ever seen it. Pleasure seeking is the most basic of all motives, and social influence often involves creating situations in which others can achieve more pleasure by doing what we want them to do than by doing something else. Parents, teachers, governments, and businesses influence our behavior by offering rewards and threatening punishments (see FIGURE 13.8). There’s nothing mysterious about how these influence attempts work, and they are often quite effective. When the Republic of Singapore warned its citizens that anyone caught chewing gum in public would face a year in prison and a $5,500 fine, the rest of the world was outraged; but when the outrage subsided, it was hard to ignore the fact that gum chewing in Singapore had fallen to an all-time low. A good caning gets your attention every time.

You’ll recall from the Memory chapter that even a sea slug will repeat behaviors that are followed by rewards and avoid behaviors that are followed by punishments. Although the same is generally true of human beings, there are some instances in which rewards and punishments can backfire. For example, children in one study were allowed to play with colored markers and then some were given a “Good Player Award.” When the children were given markers the next day, those who had received an award were less likely to play with them than were those who had not received an award (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). Why? Because children who had received an award the first day came to think of drawing as something one does to receive rewards, and if no one was going to give them an award, then why the heck should they do it (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999)? Similarly, rewards and punishments can backfire simply because people don’t like being manipulated with them. Researchers placed signs in two restrooms on a college campus: “Please don’t write on these walls” and “Do not write on these walls under any circumstances.” Two weeks later, the walls in the second restroom had more graffiti on the walls, presumably because students didn’t appreciate the threatening tone of the second sign and wrote on the walls just to prove that they could (Pennebaker & Sanders, 1976).

Figure 13.8: The Cost of Speeding The penalty for speeding in Massachusetts used to be a modest fine. In 2006, the legislature changed the law so that drivers under 18 who are caught speeding now lose their licenses for 90 days—and to get them back they have to pay $500, attend 8 hours of training classes, and retake the state’s driving exam. Guess what? Deaths among drivers under 18 fell by 38% in just 3 years. In other words, more than 8,000 young lives were saved by appealing to the hedonic motive.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/18/steep_drop_in_teen_driver_fatalities/
©JOURNAL-COURIER/CLAYTON STALTER/THE IMAGE WORKS

CULTURE & COMMUNITY: Free parking.

People don’t like to be manipulated, and they get upset when someone threatens their freedom to do as they wish. Is this a uniquely Western reaction? To find out, psychologist Eva Jonas and her colleagues asked college students one of two favors and then measured how irritated they felt (Jonas et al., 2009). In one case, they asked students if they would give up their right to park on campus for a week (“Would you mind if I used your parking card so I can participate in a research project in this building?”). In the other case, they asked students if they would give up everyone’s right to park on campus for a week (“Would you mind if we closed the entire parking lot for a tennis tournament?”). How did students react to these requests?

It depended on their culture. As the figure shows, European American students were more irritated by a request that limited their freedom than by a request that limited everyone’s freedom (“If nobody can park, that’s inconvenient. But if everybody except me can park, that’s unfair!”). But Latino and Asian American students had precisely the opposite reactions (“The needs of the requestor outweigh the needs of one student, but they don’t outweigh the needs of all students”). It appears that people do indeed value freedom—but not necessarily their own.

FUSE/JUPITERIMAGES

The Approval Motive: Acceptance Is Better Than Rejection

Other people stand between us and starvation, predation, loneliness, and all the other things that make getting shipwrecked such an unpopular pastime. We depend on others for safety, sustenance, and solidarity, and so we are powerfully motivated to have others like us, accept us, and approve of us (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Leary, 2010). Like the hedonic motive, this one leaves us vulnerable to social influence.

Normative Influence

Consider the many things you know about elevators. When you get on an elevator you are supposed to face forward and not talk to the person next to you even if you were talking to that person before you got on the elevator unless you are the only two people on the elevator in which case it’s okay to talk and face sideways but still not backward. Although no one ever taught you this rule, you probably picked it up somewhere along the way. The unwritten rules that govern social behavior are called norms, which are customary standards for behavior that are widely shared by members of a culture (Cialdini, 2013; Miller & Prentice, 1996). We learn norms with exceptional ease and we obey them with exceptional fidelity because we know that if we don’t, others won’t approve of us. For example, every human culture has a norm of reciprocity, which is the unwritten rule that people should benefit those who have benefited them (Gouldner, 1960). When a friend buys you lunch, you return the favor; and if you don’t, your friend gets miffed. Indeed, the norm of reciprocity is so strong that when researchers randomly pulled the names of strangers from a telephone directory and sent them all Christmas cards, they received Christmas cards back from most (Kunz & Woolcott, 1976).

Norms are a powerful weapon in the game of social influence. Normative influence occurs when another person’s behavior provides information about what is appropriate (see FIGURE 13.9). For example, waiters and waitresses know all about the norm of reciprocity, which is why they often give customers a piece of candy along with the bill. Studies show that customers who receive a candy feel obligated to do “a little extra” for the waiter who did “a little extra” for them (Strohmetz et al., 2002). Indeed, people will sometimes refuse small gifts precisely because they don’t want to feel indebted to the gift giver (Shen, Wan, & Wyer, 2011).

Figure 13.9: The Perils of Connection Other people’s behavior defines what is “normal,” which is one of the reasons why obesity “spreads” through social networks (Christakis & Fowler, 2007).

Source: Analysis of 12,067 participants in the Framingham Heart Study from 1971 to 2003 James Abundis/Globe Staff

The norm of reciprocity involves swapping, but the thing being swapped doesn’t have to be a favor. The door-in-the-face technique is an influence strategy that involves getting someone to deny an initial request. Here’s how it works: You ask someone for something more valuable than you really want, you wait for that person to refuse (to “slam the door in your face”), and then you ask the person for what you really want. For example, when researchers asked college students to volunteer to supervise adolescents who were going on a field trip, only 17% of the students agreed. But when the researchers first asked students to commit to spending 2 hours per week for 2 years working at a youth detention center (to which every one of the students said no) and then asked them to supervise a field trip, 50% of the students agreed (Cialdini et al., 1975). Why? The norm of reciprocity! The researchers began by asking for a large favor, which the student refused. Then the researchers made a concession by asking for a smaller favor. Because the researchers made a concession, the norm of reciprocity demanded that the student make one too—and half of them did!

Conformity

Have you ever wondered which big spender left the bill as a tip? In fact, the bills are often put there by the very people you are tipping because they know that the presence of paper money will suggest to you that others are leaving big tips and that it would be socially appropriate for you to do the same. By the way, the customary gratuity for someone who writes a textbook for you is 15%. But most students spend more.

DON PAULSON PHOTOGRAPHY/PURESTOCK/SUPERSTOCK

People can influence us by invoking familiar norms, such as the norm of reciprocity. But if you’ve ever found yourself sneaking a peek at the diner next to you, hoping to discover whether the little fork is supposed to be used for the shrimp or the salad, then you know that other people can influence us by defining new norms in ambiguous, confusing, or novel situations. Conformity is the tendency to do what others do simply because others are doing it, and it results in part from normative influence.

In a classic study, psychologist Solomon Asch had participants sit in a room with seven other people who appeared to be ordinary participants, but who were actually trained actors (Asch, 1951, 1956). An experimenter explained that the participants would be shown cards with three printed lines and that his or her job was simply to say which of the three lines matched a “standard line” that was printed on another card (see FIGURE 13.10). The experimenter held up a card and then asked each person to answer in turn. The real participant was among the last to be called on. Everything went well on the first two trials, but then on the third trial something really strange happened: the actors all began giving the same wrong answer! What did the real participants do? Seventy-five percent of them conformed and announced the wrong answer on at least one trial. Subsequent research has shown that these participants didn’t actually misperceive the length of the lines, but were instead succumbing to normative influence (Asch, 1955; Nemeth & Chiles, 1988). Giving the wrong answer was apparently “the right thing to do” and so participants did it.

Figure 13.10: Asch’s Conformity Study If you were asked which of the lines on the right (A, B, or C) matches the standard line on the left, what would you say? Research on conformity suggests that your answer would depend, in part, on how other people in the room answered the same question.

The perplexed research participant (center), flanked by confederates (who are “in” on the experiment), is on the verge of conformity in one of Solomon Asch’s line-judging experiments.

©WILLIAM VANDIVERT

The behavior of others can tell us what is proper, appropriate, expected, and accepted (in other words, it can define a norm) and once a norm is defined, we feel obliged to honor it. When a Holiday Inn in Tempe, Arizona, left a variety of different “message cards” in guests’ bathrooms in the hopes of convincing those guests to reuse their towels rather than laundering them every day, it discovered that the single most effective message was the one that simply read: “Seventy five percent of our guests use their towels more than once” (Cialdini, 2005). When the Sacramento Municipal Utility District randomly selected 35,000 customers and sent them electric bills showing how their energy consumption compared to that of their neighbors (see FIGURE 13.11), consumption fell by 2% (Kaufman, 2009). Clearly, normative influence can be a force for good.

Obedience

Other people’s behavior can provide information about norms, but in most situations there are a few people whom we all recognize as having special authority both to define the norms and to enforce them. The guy who works at the movie theater may be some high school fanboy with a bad haircut and a 10:00 p.m. curfew, but in the context of the theater, he is the authority. So when he asks you to put away your cell and stop texting in the middle of the movie, you do as you are told. Obedience is the tendency to do what powerful people tell us to do.

Figure 13.11: Normative Influence at Home In 2008, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District randomly selected 35,000 of its customers and sent them electric bills like the one above. The bill didn’t just show how much electricity the customer had used, it also showed how much electricity was used by neighbors who lived in similar-sized homes. When the utility crunched the numbers, they discovered that customers who had received this “compare with the neighbors” bill had reduced their electricity consumption by 2% compared to customers who had received a traditional bill (Kaufman, 2009). Clearly, normative influence can be a force for good.

MAX WHITTAKER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

OTHER VOICES: 91% of All Students Read This Box and Love It

Tina Rosenberg is an editorial writer for the New York Times. Her 1995 book The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

PHOTO: NOAH GREENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY

Binge drinking is a problem on college campuses across America (Wechsler & Nelson, 2001). About half of all students report doing it, and those who do are much more likely to miss classes, get behind in their school work, drive drunk, and have unprotected sex. So what to do?

Colleges have tried a number of remedies—from education to abstinence—and none of them has worked particularly well. But lately, some schools have taken a new approach called “social norming.” Although this approach is surprisingly effective, it is also controversial. Tina Rosenberg’s most recent book is Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World. In the following essay, she describes both the technique and the controversy.

…Like most universities, Northern Illinois University in DeKalb has a problem with heavy drinking. In the 1980s, the school was trying to cut down on student use of alcohol with the usual strategies. One campaign warned teenagers of the consequences of heavy drinking. “It was the ‘don’t run with a sharp stick you’ll poke your eye out’ theory of behavior change,” said Michael Haines, who was the coordinator of the school’s Health Enhancement Services. When that didn’t work, Haines tried combining the scare approach with information on how to be well: “It’s O.K. to drink if you don’t drink too much—but if you do, bad things will happen to you.”

That one failed, too. In 1989, 45 percent of students surveyed said they drank more than five drinks at parties. This percentage was slightly higher than when the campaigns began. And students thought heavy drinking was even more common; they believed that 69 percent of their peers drank that much at parties.

But by then Haines had something new to try. In 1987 he had attended a conference on alcohol in higher education sponsored by the United States Department of Education. There Wes Perkins, a professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Alan Berkowitz, a psychologist in the school’s counseling center, presented a paper that they had just published on how student drinking is affected by peers. “There are decades of research on peer influence—that’s nothing new,” Perkins said at the meeting. What was new was their survey showing that when students were asked how much their peers drank, they grossly overestimated the amount. If the students were responding to peer pressure, the researchers said, it was coming from imaginary peers.

The “aha!” conclusion Perkins and Berkowitz drew was this: maybe students’ drinking behavior could be changed by just telling them the truth.

Haines surveyed students at Northern Illinois University and found that they also had a distorted view of how much their peers drink. He decided to try a new campaign, with the theme “most students drink moderately.” The centerpiece of the campaign was a series of ads in the Northern Star, the campus newspaper, with pictures of students and the caption “two thirds of Northern Illinois University students (72%) drink 5 or fewer drinks when they ‘party’.”…

Haines’s staff also made posters with campus drinking facts and told students that if they had those posters on the wall when an inspector came around, they would earn $5. (35 percent of the students did have them posted when inspected.) Later they made buttons for students in the fraternity and sorority system—these students drank more heavily—that said “Most of Us,” and offered another $5 for being caught wearing one. The buttons were deliberately cryptic, to start a conversation.

After the first year of the social norming campaign, the perception of heavy drinking had fallen from 69 to 61 percent. Actual heavy drinking fell from 45 to 38 percent. The campaign went on for a decade, and at the end of it NIU students believed that 33 percent of their fellow students were episodic heavy drinkers, and only 25 percent really were—a decline in heavy drinking of 44 percent….

Why isn’t this idea more widely used? One reason is that it can be controversial. Telling college students “most of you drink moderately” is very different than saying “don’t drink.” (It’s so different, in fact, that the National Social Norms Institute, with headquarters at the University of Virginia, gets its money from Anheuser Busch—a decision that has undercut support for the idea of social norming.) The approach angers people who lobby for a strong, unmuddied message of disapproval—even though, of course, disapproval doesn’t reduce bad behavior, and social norming does.…

Social norming is a powerful but controversial tool for changing behavior. When we tell students about drinking on campus, should we tell them what’s true (even if the truth is a bit ugly) or should we tell them what’s best (even if they are unlikely to do it)?

From the New York Times, March 27, 2013. © 2013 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/the-destructive-influence-of-imaginary-peers/

Why do we obey powerful people? Well, yes, sometimes they have guns. But while powerful people are often capable of rewarding and punishing us, research shows that much of their influence is normative (Tyler, 1990). Psychologist Stanley Milgram (1963) demonstrated this in one of psychology’s most infamous experiments. The participants in this experiment met a middle-aged man who was introduced as another participant, but who was actually a trained actor. An experimenter in a lab coat explained that the participant would play the role of teacher and the actor would play the role of learner. The teacher and learner would sit in different rooms, the teacher would read words to the learner over a microphone, and the learner would then repeat the words back to the teacher. If the learner made a mistake, the teacher would press a button that delivered an electric shock to the learner (see FIGURE 13.12). The shock-generating machine (which was totally fake) offered 30 levels of shock, ranging from 15 volts (labeled slight shock) to 450 volts (labeled Danger: severe shock).

Figure 13.12: Milgram’s Obedience Studies The learner (left) is being hooked up to the shock generator (right) that was used in Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies.

©1965 BY STANLEY MILGRAM
©1965 BY STANLEY MILGRAM

In 1971, Psychologist Philip Zimbardo built a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department and invited two dozen students to play the roles of either a prisoner or a guard. After 6 days he was forced to halt his observational study because many of the guards had become so abusive toward the prisoners that he feared for their safety (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973).

PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO, INC.

After the learner was strapped into his chair, the experiment began. When the learner made his first mistake, the participant dutifully delivered a 15-volt shock. As the learner made more mistakes, he received more shocks. When the participant delivered the 75-volt shock, the learner cried out in pain. At 150 volts, the learner screamed, “Get me out of here. I told you I have heart trouble…I refuse to go on. Let me out!” With every shock, the learner’s screams became more agonized as he pleaded pitifully for his freedom. Then, after receiving the 330-volt shock, the learner stopped responding altogether. Participants were naturally upset by all this and typically asked the experimenter to stop, but the experimenter simply replied, “You have no choice; you must go on.” The experimenter never threatened the participant with punishment of any kind. Rather, he just stood there with his clipboard in hand and calmly instructed the participant to continue. So what did the participants do? Eighty percent of the participants continued to shock the learner even after he screamed, complained, pleaded, and then fell silent. And 62% went all the way, delivering the highest possible voltage. Although Milgram’s study was conducted nearly half a century ago, a recent replication revealed about the same rate of obedience (Burger, 2009).

Were these people psychopathic sadists? Would normal people electrocute a stranger just because some guy in a lab coat told them to? The answer, it seems, is yes—as long as normal means being sensitive to social norms. The participants in this experiment knew that hurting others is often wrong but not always wrong: Doctors give painful injections, and teachers give painful exams. There are many situations in which it is permissible—and even desirable—to cause someone to suffer in the service of a higher goal. The experimenter’s calm demeanor and persistent instruction suggested that he, and not the participant, knew what was appropriate in this particular situation, and so the participant did as ordered. Subsequent research confirmed that participants’ obedience was due to normative pressure. When the experimenter’s authority to define the norm was undermined (e.g., when a second experimenter appeared to disagree with the first or when the instructions were given by a person who wasn’t wearing a lab coat), participants rarely obeyed the instructions (Milgram, 1974; Miller, 1986).

The Accuracy Motive: Right Is Better Than Wrong

When you are hungry, you open the refrigerator and grab an apple because you know that apples (a) taste good and (b) are in the refrigerator. This action, like most actions, relies on both an attitude, which is an enduring positive or negative evaluation of an object or event, and a belief, which is an enduring piece of knowledge about an object or event. In a sense, our attitudes tell us what we should do (eat an apple) and our beliefs tell us how to do it (start by opening the fridge). If our attitudes or beliefs are inaccurate—that is, if we can’t tell good from bad or true from false—then our actions are likely to be fruitless. Because we rely so much on our attitudes and beliefs, it isn’t surprising that we are motivated to have the right ones, and that motivation leaves us vulnerable to social influence.

Informational Influence

Is McDonald’s trying to keep track of sales from the parking lot? Probably not. Rather, they want you to know that other people are buying their hamburgers, which suggests that they are worth buying.

RICHARD CUMMINS/CORBIS

If everyone in the mall suddenly ran screaming for the exit, you’d probably join them—not because you were afraid that they would disapprove of you if you didn’t—but because their behavior would suggest to you that there was something worth running from. Informational influence occurs when another person’s behavior provides information about what is true. You can observe the power of informational influence yourself just by standing in the middle of the sidewalk, tilting back your head, and staring at the top of a tall building. Research shows that within just a few minutes, other people will stop and stare too (Milgram, Bickman, & Berkowitz, 1969). Why? They will assume that if you are looking, then there must be something worth looking at.

You are the constant target of informational influence. When a salesperson tells you that “most people buy the iPad with extra memory,” she is artfully suggesting that you should take other people’s behavior as information about the product. Advertisements that refer to soft drinks as “popular” or books as “best sellers” are reminding you that other people are buying these particular drinks and books, which suggests that they know something you don’t and that you’d be wise to follow their example. Situation comedies provide laugh tracks because the producers know that when you hear other people laughing, you will mindlessly assume that something must be funny (Fein, Goethals, & Kugler, 2007; Nosanchuk & Lightstone, 1974). Bars and nightclubs make people stand in line even when there is plenty of room inside because they know that passersby will see the line and assume that the club is worth waiting for. In short, the world is full of objects and events that we know little about, and we can often cure our ignorance by paying attention to the way in which others are acting toward them. Alas, the very thing that makes us open to information leaves us open to manipulation as well.

It is now common during political debates for broadcasters to display real-time information about people’s reactions to the candidates. But recent studies show that this information influences viewers’ opinions about who won the debate as well as their voting decisions (Davis, Bowers, & Memon, 2011).

AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ

Persuasion

When the next presidential election rolls around, two things will happen. First, the candidates will say that they intend to win your vote by making arguments that focus on the issues. Second, the candidates will then avoid arguments, ignore issues, and attempt to win your vote with a variety of cheap tricks and emotional appeals. What the candidates promise to do and what they actually do reflect two basic forms of persuasion, which occurs when a person’s attitudes or beliefs are influenced by a communication from another person (Albarracín & Vargas, 2010; Petty & Wegener, 1998). The candidates will promise to persuade you by demonstrating that their positions on the issues are the most practical, intelligent, fair, and beneficial. Having made that promise, they will then devote most of their financial resources to persuading you by other means: for example, by dressing nicely and smiling a lot, by surrounding themselves with famous athletes and movie stars, by repeatedly pairing their opponent’s picture with Osama bin Laden’s, and so on. In other words, the candidates will promise to engage in systematic persuasion, which refers to the process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to reason, but they will spend most of their time and money engaged in heuristic persuasion, which refers to the process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to habit or emotion (Chaiken, 1980; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Why do advertisers hire celebrities to endorse shoes but not cars? Cars are relatively expensive, so people are motivated to process information about them and are therefore persuaded by facts about quality and price. Shoes are relatively inexpensive, so people are not motivated to process information about them and are therefore persuaded by celebrity endorsements.

©DWAYNE NEWTON/PHOTOEDIT—ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
THE ADVERTISING ARCHIVES

How do these two forms of persuasion work? Systematic persuasion appeals to logic and reason, and assumes that people will be more persuaded when evidence and arguments are strong rather than weak. Heuristic persuasion appeals to habit and emotion, and assumes that rather than weighing evidence and analyzing arguments, people will often use heuristics (simple shortcuts or “rules of thumb”) to help them decide whether to believe a communication (see the Language and Thought chapter). Which form of persuasion will be more effective depends on whether the person is willing and able to weigh evidence and analyze arguments.

In one study, students heard a speech that contained either strong or weak arguments in favor of instituting comprehensive exams at their school (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981). Some students were told that the speaker was a Princeton University professor, and others were told that the speaker was a high school student—a bit of information that could be used as a shortcut to decide whether to believe the speech. Some students were told that their university was considering implementing these exams right away, whereas others were told that their university was considering implementing these exams in 10 years—a bit of information that made students feel motivated or unmotivated to analyze the evidence. As FIGURE 13.13 shows, when students were motivated to analyze the evidence, they were systematically persuaded—that is, their attitudes and beliefs were influenced by the strength of the arguments but not by the status of the speaker. But when students were not motivated to analyze the evidence, they were heuristically persuaded—that is, their attitudes and beliefs were influenced by the status of the speaker but not by the strength of the arguments.

Figure 13.13: Systematic and Heuristic Persuasion (a) Systematic persuasion. When students were motivated to analyze arguments because they would be personally affected by them, their attitudes were influenced by the strength of the arguments (strong arguments were more persuasive than weak arguments), but not by the status of the communicator (the Princeton professor was not more persuasive than the high school student). (b) Heuristic persuasion. When students were not motivated to analyze arguments because they would not be personally affected by them, their attitudes were influenced by the status of the communicator (the Princeton professor was more persuasive than the high school student), but not by the strength of the arguments (strong arguments were no more persuasive than weak arguments; Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981).

Consistency

If a friend told you that rabbits had just staged a coup in Antarctica and were halting all carrot exports, you probably wouldn’t turn on CNN. You’d know right away that your friend was joking (or stupid) because the statement is logically inconsistent with other things that you know are true, for example, that rabbits do not foment revolution and that Antarctica does not export carrots. People evaluate the accuracy of new beliefs by assessing their consistency with old beliefs, and although this is not a foolproof method for determining whether something is true, it provides a pretty good approximation. We are motivated to be accurate, and because consistency is a rough measure of accuracy, we are motivated to be consistent as well (Cialdini, Trost, & Newsom, 1995).

That motivation leaves us vulnerable to social influence. For example, the foot-in-the-door technique involves making a small request and then following it with a larger request (Burger, 1999). In one study (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), experimenters went to a neighborhood and knocked on doors to see if they could convince homeowners to agree to have a big ugly “Drive Carefully” sign installed in their front yards. One group of homeowners was simply asked to install the sign, and only 17% said yes. A second group of homeowners was first asked to sign a petition urging the state legislature to promote safe driving (which almost all agreed to do) and was then asked to install the ugly sign. And 55% said yes! Why would homeowners be more likely to grant two requests than one?

Just imagine how the homeowners in the second group felt. They had already signed a petition stating that they thought safe driving was important, and yet they knew they didn’t want to install an ugly sign in their front yards. As they wrestled with this inconsistency, they probably began to experience a feeling called cognitive dissonance, which is an unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of his or her actions, attitudes, or beliefs (Festinger, 1957). When people experience cognitive dissonance they naturally try to alleviate it, and one way to alleviate cognitive dissonance is to restore consistency among one’s actions, attitudes, and beliefs (Aronson, 1969; Cooper & Fazio, 1984). Allowing the sign to be installed in their yards accomplished that. Recent research shows that this phenomenon can be used to good effect: Hotel guests who were asked at check-in to commit to being a “Friend of the Earth” were 25% more likely to reuse their towels during their stay (Baca-Motes et al., 2013).

Figure 13.14: Alleviating Cognitive Dissonance Suffering for something of little value can cause cognitive dissonance. One way to alleviate that dissonance is to change your belief about the value of the thing you suffered for.

The fact that we can alleviate cognitive dissonance by changing our actions, attitudes, or beliefs has some interesting implications. For instance, in one study, female college students applied to join a weekly discussion on “the psychology of sex.” Women in the control group were allowed to join the discussion, but women in the experimental group were allowed to join the discussion only after first passing an embarrassing test that involved reading pornographic fiction to a strange man. Although the carefully staged discussion was as dull as possible, women in the experimental group found it more interesting than did women in the control group (Aronson & Mills, 1958). Why? Women in the experimental group knew that they had paid a steep price to join the group (“I read all that porn out loud!”), but that belief was inconsistent with the belief that the discussion was worthless. As such, the women experienced cognitive dissonance, which they alleviated by changing their beliefs about the value of the discussion (see the top half of FIGURE 13.14.). We normally think that people pay for things because they value them, but as this study shows, people sometimes value things because they’ve paid for them—with money, time, attention, blood, sweat, or tears. It is little wonder that some fraternities use hazing to breed loyalty, that some religions require their adherents to make large personal or monetary sacrifices, that some gourmet restaurants charge outrageous amounts to keep their patrons coming back, or that some men and women play hard to get to maintain their suitors’ interest.

Members of Michigan Tech University’s Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity brave subzero wind chill to participate in the group’s annual “Grundy Run” through the campus.

AP PHOTO/DAILY MINING GAZETTE, MICHELE JOKINEN

We are motivated to be consistent, but there are inevitably times when we just can’t, for example, when we tell a friend that her new hairstyle is “daring” when it actually resembles a wet skunk after an unfortunate encounter with a snowblower. Why don’t we experience cognitive dissonance under such circumstances and come to believe our own lies? Because while telling a friend that her hairstyle is daring is inconsistent with the belief that her hairstyle is hideous, it is perfectly consistent with the belief that one should be nice to one’s friends. When small inconsistencies are justified by large consistencies, cognitive dissonance is reduced.

For example, participants in one study were asked to perform a dull task that involved turning knobs one way, then the other way, and then back again. After the participants were sufficiently bored, the experimenter explained that he desperately needed a few more people to volunteer for the study, and he asked the participants to go into the hallway, find another person, and tell that person that the knob-turning task was great fun. The experimenter offered some participants $1 to tell this lie, and he offered other participants $20. All participants agreed to tell the lie, and after they did so, they were asked to report their true enjoyment of the knob-turning task. The results showed that participants liked the task more when they were paid $1 than $20 to lie about it (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). Why? Because the belief this knob-turning task is dull was inconsistent with the belief I recommended the task to that person in the hallway, but the latter belief was perfectly consistent with the belief that $20 is a lot of money. For some participants, the large payment justified the lie, so only those people who received the small payment experienced cognitive dissonance. As such, only the participants who received $1 felt the need to restore consistency by changing their beliefs about the enjoyableness of the task (see the bottom half of Figure 13.14).