Those of us who grew up watching cartoons on Saturday mornings have usually thought a bit about which of the standard superpowers we would 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 is 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 behaviour (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). But how does it work? If you want someone to give you their time, money, allegiance, or affection, you would 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.

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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 behaviour by offering rewards and threatening punishments (see FIGURE 13.8). There is 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 $5500 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 will recall from the Memory chapter that even a sea slug will repeat behaviours that are followed by rewards and avoid behaviours 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 coloured 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 do not like being manipulated with them. Researchers placed signs in two restrooms on a university campus: “Please do not 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 did not appreciate the threatening tone of the second sign and wrote on the walls just to prove that they could (Pennebaker & Sanders, 1976).

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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 motive leaves us vulnerable to social 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 is 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 behaviour are called norms, which are customary standards for behaviour 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 do not, others will not 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 benefitted them (Gouldner, 1960). When a friend buys you lunch, you return the favour; and if you do not, 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).

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Norms are a powerful weapon in the game of social influence. Normative influence occurs when another person’s behaviour provides information about what is appropriate (see FIGURE 13.9). For example, waiters 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 do not want to feel indebted to the gift giver (Shen, Wan, & Wyer, 2011).

The norm of reciprocity involves swapping, but the thing being swapped does not have to be a favour. The door-in-the-face technique is an influence strategy that involves getting someone to deny an initial request. Here is 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 university students to volunteer to supervise adolescents who were going on a field trip, only 17 percent 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 centre (to which every one of the students said no) and then asked them to supervise a field trip, 50 percent of the students agreed (Cialdini et al., 1975). Why? The norm of reciprocity! The researchers began by asking for a large favour, which the student refused. Then the researchers made a concession by asking for a smaller favour. Because the researchers made a concession, the norm of reciprocity demanded that the student make one too—and half of them did!

People can influence us by invoking familiar norms, such as the norm of reciprocity. But if you have 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 did not 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.

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The behaviour 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 honour 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 electricity provider in Sacramento, California randomly selected 35 000 customers and sent them electric bills showing how their energy consumption compared to that of their neighbours (see FIGURE 13.11), consumption fell by 2 percent (Kaufman, 2009). Clearly, normative influence can be a force for good.

Other people’s behaviour 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 theatre may be some high school fanboy with a bad haircut and a 10:00 p.m. curfew, but in the context of the theatre, 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.

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Why do we obey powerful people? Although 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 V (labelled slight shock) to 450 V (labelled Danger: severe shock).

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After the learner was strapped into his chair, the experiment began. When the learner made his first mistake, the participant dutifully delivered a 15-V shock. As the learner made more mistakes, he received more shocks. When the participant delivered the 75-V shock, the learner cried out in pain. At 150 V, 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-V 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 percent 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 demeanour 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 was not wearing a lab coat), participants rarely obeyed the instructions. Other factors influenced obedience. For example, obedience dropped dramatically if the experimenter was not physically present, but gave orders remotely (by telephone or voice recording). Obedience also dropped if the participant was in the same room as the learner, so the participant could see as well as hear him—but the obedience rate was still 40 percent. In another condition, the learner received a shock only when his hand rested on a metal shockplate. At the 150-V level, the learner demanded to be let free, and refused to put his hand on the shockplate. The experimenter then ordered the naive participant to force the learner’s hand onto the plate. Even in this condition, 30 percent of participants obeyed (Milgram, 1974; Miller, 1986).

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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 cannot 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 is not surprising that we are motivated to have the right ones, and that motivation leaves us vulnerable to social influence.

If everyone in the mall suddenly ran screaming for the exit, you would probably join them—not because you were afraid that they would disapprove of you if you did not—but because their behaviour would suggest to you that there was something worth running from. Informational influence occurs when another person’s behaviour 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 behaviour 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 do not and that you would 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.

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When the next federal 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 flipping burgers at barbeques and wearing cardigans, by repeatedly “dissing” the other parties’ candidates, 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).

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, university students heard a speech that contained either strong or weak arguments in favour of instituting comprehensive exams at their school (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981). Some students were told that the speaker was a 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.

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If a friend told you that rabbits had just staged a coup in Antarctica and were halting all carrot exports, you probably would not turn on CBC. You would 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; Freedman & Fraser, 1966). In one study (Pliner et al., 1974), the experimenter went to a Toronto neighbourhood and knocked on doors asking for donations for the Cancer Society. Residents in about one third of the houses in the neighbourhood were simply asked whether they would donate, and 46 percent said they would. The average donation among those who gave money was 58 cents (this was 1974!). The evening before the donation drive, another experimenter canvassed other houses in the neighbourhood, asking residents whether they would be willing to wear a daffodil pin the next day to help publicize the fundraising drive. All residents complied with this request. The next evening, when asked to donate to the Cancer Society, almost twice the proportion of these people (77 percent) said they would, and those people donated an average that was nearly twice as high (92 cents) as in the other group. Why would residents be more likely to grant two requests than one?

Just imagine how the homeowners in the second group felt. They had already agreed to wear a pin publicizing the Cancer Society funding drive, and yet they knew they did not want to donate much money. 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). Donating generously to the Cancer Society 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 percent more likely to re-use their towels during their stay (Baca-Motes et al., 2013).

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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 university 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 have 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.

We are motivated to be consistent, but there are inevitably times when we just cannot, 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 do not 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.

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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).