SOCIAL INFLUENCE SUMMARY
Psychology in Society Minor
2020-2021
,Table of contents
Week 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 2
Reading: Chapter 1) Weapons of Influence ........................................................................................ 2
Reading: Chapter 7) Instant Influence: Primitive Consent for an Automatic Age .............................. 4
Reading: Petrova, P., Schwarz, N., Song, H. Fluency and social influence: Lessons from judgment
and decision-making. .......................................................................................................................... 5
Lecture: week 1 ................................................................................................................................... 8
Week 2 & 3: Social Proof ............................................................................................................ 13
Reading: Chapter 4) Social Proof: Truths Are Us .............................................................................. 13
Lecture: week 2 ................................................................................................................................. 16
Reading: Goldstein, N.J., & Mortensen, C.R. Social norms: A how-to (and how-not-to) guide. ....... 18
Reading: Mazar, N., & Ariely, D. Dishonesty in everyday life and its policy implications. ................ 20
Lecture: week 3 ................................................................................................................................. 24
Week 4: Commitment and consistency ....................................................................................... 29
Reading: Chapter 3) Commitment and Consistency: Hobgoblins of the Mind ................................. 29
Reading: J.M. Burger. The Foot-in-the-Door Compliance Procedure: A Multiple-Process Analysis and
Review ............................................................................................................................................... 33
Lecture: week 4 ................................................................................................................................. 38
Week 5: Reciprocity and Liking ................................................................................................... 48
Reading: Chapter 2) Reciprocation: The Old Give and Take… and Take........................................... 48
Reading: Chapter 5) Liking: the Friendly Thief .................................................................................. 51
Reading: Brown, S.L., & Maner, J.K. Egoism or altruism? Hard-nosed experiments and deep
philosophical questions. .................................................................................................................... 55
Lecture: week 5 ................................................................................................................................. 58
Week 6: Using emotions and scarcity.......................................................................................... 66
Reading: Chapter 8) Scarcity: The Rule of the Few ........................................................................... 66
Reading: Chapter 13) Motivational appeals ..................................................................................... 69
Reading: Pratkanis, A.R., & Aronson, E. The fear appeal, in Age of propaganda: The everyday use
and abuse of persuasion. .................................................................................................................. 74
Lecture: week 6 ................................................................................................................................. 75
Week 7: Leftovers/Authority/Other techniques + topics ............................................................. 85
Reading: Chapter 6) Authority: Directed Deference......................................................................... 85
Lecture: week 7 ................................................................................................................................. 88
Reading: Cialdini, R.B., & Goldstein, N.J. Social influence: Compliance and conformity. (used
throughout course) ........................................................................................................................... 95
1
,Week 1: Introduction
Reading: Chapter 1) Weapons of Influence
Click, Whirr
• Fixed-action patterns → can involve intricate sequences of behaviour. A fundamental
characteristic of these patterns is that the behaviours comprising them occur in virtually the same
fashion and in the same order every time.
• Click, Whirr → Click and the appropriate tape is activated; whirr and out rolls the standard
sequence of behaviour.
• It is interesting how certain types of behaviour are activated. It is not (for instance) the rival as a
whole that is the trigger; it is, rather, some specific feature, the trigger feature → one tiny aspect
of the totality.
• Important things to realise:
o First, the automatic, fixed-action patterns of animals work very well most of the time.
o Second, we, too, have our pre-programmed tapes; and, although they usually work to our
advantage, the trigger features that activate them can due us into playing the tapes at the
wrong times.
▪ Important differences: the automatic behaviour patterns of humans tend to be
learned rather than inborn, more flexible than the lock-step patterns of the lower
animals, and responsive to a larger number of triggers.
• A well-known principle of human behaviour says that when we ask someone to do us a favour we
will be more successful if we provide a reason.
o From the research of Langer, it became clear that it doesn’t matter what the reason is (it
doesn’t even have to give a real reason), as long as people heard the word because, they
were willing to help someone. The word because triggered an automatic compliance
response from Langer’s subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to
comply → Click, whirr.
o There are many situations in which human behaviour does not work in a mechanical, tape-
activated way, still researchers are convinced that most of the time it does.
• A standard principle customers use to guide their buying: expensive = good. Much research shows
that people who are unsure of an item’s quality often use this stereotype.
o Price alone had become a trigger feature for quality, and a dramatic increase in price alone
had led to a dramatic increase in sales among the quality-hungry buyers.
Betting the Shortcut Odds
• In fact, automatic, stereotyped behaviour is prevalent in much human action, because in many
cases, it is the most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary.
• We exist in an extraordinarily complicated environment, easily the most rapidly moving and
complex that has ever existed on this planet, To deal with it, we need shortcuts → we must very
often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key features
and then to respond without thinking when one or another of these trigger features is present.
o Sometimes the behaviour that unrolls will not be appropriate for the situation, because
not even the best stereotypes and trigger features work every time.
o Judgemental heuristics → shortcuts that operate in much the same fashion as the
expensive=good rule, allowing for simplified thinking that works well most of the time but
leaves us open to occasional, costly mistakes.
• There is an unsettling tendency in our society to accept unthinkingly the statements and directions
of individuals who appear to be authorities on the topic.
2
, o This tendency to respond mechanically to one piece of information (status as “expert”) in
a situation is what we have been calling automatic or click, whirr responding.
o Controlled responding, on the other hand, is the tendency to react on the basis of a
thorough analysis of all of the information.
▪ People are more likely to deal with information in a controlled fashion when they
have both the desire and the ability to analyse it carefully.
▪ We resist the seductive luxury of registering and reacting to just a single (trigger)
feature of the available information when an issue is important to us.
• However, this is dependent not only on the desire but also the ability to
do so.
The Profiteers
• Most of us know very little about our automatic behaviour patterns (probably because of the
mechanistic, unthinking manner in which they occur). This makes us terribly vulnerable to anyone
who does know how they work.
• One group of organisms, often termed mimics, copy the trigger features of other animals in an
attempt to trick these animals into mistakenly playing the right behaviour at the wrong times. The
mimics then exploit this altogether inappropriate action for their own benefit.
• There are some people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and
who employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want.
o The secret of their effectiveness lies in the way that they structure their requests, the way
that they arm themselves with one or another of the weapons of influence that exist in
the social environment.
Jujitsu
• Jujitsu is a Japanese martial art form that exploit the power inherent in such naturally present
principles as gravity, leverage, momentum, and inertia. → if someone knows how and where to
engage the action of these principles that person can easily defeat a physically stronger rival.
• This is the same for exploiters of the weapons of automatic influence → the profiteers can
commission the power of these weapons for use against their targets while exerting little personal
force.
o This last feature of the process gives the profiteers an enormous additional benefit – the
ability to manipulate without the appearance of manipulation.
• The contrast principle affects the way we see the difference between two things that are
presented one after another. If the second item is fairly different form the first, we will tend to
see it as more different than it actually is.
o The great advantage of this principle is not only that it works but also that it is virtually
undetectable.
o So just as it is possible to make the same bucket of water appear to be hotter or colder
depending on the temperature of previously presented water, it is possible to make the
price of the same item seem higher or lower depending on the price of a previously
presented item.
Summary
• Ethologists, researchers who study animal behaviour in the natural environment, have noticed
that among many animal species behaviour often occurs in rigid and mechanical manners. Called
fixed-action patterns, these mechanical behaviour sequences are noteworthy in their similarity
to certain automatic (click-whirr) responding by humans. For both humans and subhumans, the
automatic behaviour patterns tend to be triggered by a single feature of the relevant information
3
, in the situation. This single feature, or trigger feature, can often prove very valuable by allowing
an individual to decide on a correct course of action without having to analyse carefully and
completely each of the other pieces of information in the situation.
• The advantage of such shortcut responding lies in its efficiency and economy; by reacting
automatically to a usually informative trigger feature, an individual preserves crucial time, energy,
and mental capacity. The disadvantage of such responding lies in its vulnerability to silly and costly
mistakes; by reacting to only a piece of the available information (even a normally predictive
piece), an individual increases the chances of error, especially when responding in an automatic,
mindless fashion. The chances of error increase even further when other individuals seek to profit
by arranging (through manipulation of trigger features) to stimulate a desired behaviour at
inappropriate times.
• Much of the compliance process (wherein one person is spurred to comply with another person’s
request) can be understood in terms of a human tendency for automatic, shortcut responding.
Most individuals in our culture have developed a set of trigger features for compliance, that is, a
set of specific pieces of information that normally tell us when compliance with a request is likely
to be correct and beneficial. Each of these trigger features for compliance can be used like a
weapon (or influence) to stimulate people to agree to requests.
Reading: Chapter 7) Instant Influence: Primitive Consent for an Automatic Age
Primitive Automaticity
• Very often we make a decision about someone or something we don’t use all of the relevant
available information. We use, instead, only a single, highly representative piece of the total.
• Despite the susceptibility to stupid decisions that accompanies a reliance on a single feature of
the available data, the pace of modern life demands that we frequently use this shortcut.
• With the sophisticated mental apparatus we have used to build world eminence as a species, we
have created an environment so complex, fast-paced, and information-laden that we must
increasingly deal with it in the fashion of the animals we long ago transcended.
Modern Automaticity
• Human knowledge has snowballed into an era of momentum-fed, multiplicative, monstrous
expansion.
• The scientific information explosion is not limited to such arcane arenas as molecular chemistry
or quantum physics, but extends to everyday areas of knowledge where we strive to keep
ourselves current – health, child development, nutrition.
• Novelty, transience, diversity, and acceleration are acknowledged as prime descriptors of civilized
existence.
• This avalanche of information and choices is made possible by burgeoning technological progress.
Leading the way are developments in our ability to collect, store, retrieve, and communicate
information.
• We are creating an array of devices capable of delivering a universe of information “to anyone,
anywhere, anytime”.
o Our modern era, often termed The Information Age, has never been called The Knowledge
Age. Information does not translate directly into knowledge: it must first be processed –
accessed, absorbed, comprehended, integrated, and retained.
Shortcuts Shall Be Sacred
4
, • Because technology can evolve much faster than we can, our natural capacity to process
information is likely to be increasingly inadequate to handle the abundance of change, choice,
and challenge that is characteristic of modern life.
• Unlike the lower animals, whose cognitive powers have always been relatively deficient, we
have created our own deficiency by constructing a radically more complex world.
o The consequence: when making a decision, we will less frequently engage in a fully
considered analysis of the total situation (but focus on a single feature)
o The problem comes when this shortcut approach leads to erroneous actions and
wrongheaded decisions.
• Most frequently used shortcut: according to the principle of social proof, we often decide to
do what other people like us are doing → an action that is popular in a given situation is also
functional and appropriate.
o Disadvantage: when a compliance practitioner tries to stimulate a shortcut response
by giving us a fraudulent signal for it.
o We should be willing to use boycott, threat, confrontation, censure, tirade, nearly
anything to retaliate.
Summary
• Because of remarkable technological advances, information is burgeoning, choices and
alternatives are expanding, knowledge is exploding. In this avalanche of change and choice, we
have had to adjust. One fundamental adjustment has come in the way we make decisions. More
and more, we are forced to resort to another decision-making approach – a shortcut approach in
which the decision to comply (or agree or believe or buy) is made on the basis of a single, usually
reliable piece of information.
• Because of the increasing tendency for cognitive overload in our society, the prevalence of
shortcut decision making is likely to increase proportionately. Compliance professionals who
infuse their requests with one or another of the triggers of influence are more likely to be
successful. The use of these triggers by practitioners is not necessarily exploitative. It only
becomes so when the trigger is not a natural feature of the situation but is fabricated by the
practitioner. In order to retain the beneficial character of shortcut response, it is important to
oppose such fabrication by all appropriate means.
Reading: Petrova, P., Schwarz, N., Song, H. Fluency and social influence: Lessons from
judgment and decision-making.
• Cialdini recognized that by describing the undesirable behaviour as common, such messages can
actually increase its frequency, rather than reduce it.
• To decrease the frequency of undesirable actions, other public service messages ask recipients to
imagine potential negative outcomes. Yet, Cialdini’s research reveals that because the negative
outcomes are often abstract, such messages can make these outcomes seem less likely to occur,
in contrast to what the message intended.
• Over the last couple of decades, numerous studies have indeed shown that the experience of ease
or difficulty in generating thoughts, generating images, processing information, or making a
decision can have a profound influence on judgments and behaviour.
FLUENCY AND SOCIAL CONSENSUS: IT SOUNDS FAMILIAR, IT MUST BE POPULAR
• One of the most basic forces that influence our behaviour are the actions and opinions of others.
• Unfortunately, we are poor at tracking how often we’ve heard or seen something. Instead, we rely
on whether it seems familiar — if it does, we’ve probably heard or seen it before.
5
, • To infer a norm, people draw on the experience of familiarity, but are insensitive to where this
fluency experience comes from.
FLUENCY AND TRUTH: IT SOUNDS FAMILIAR, IT’S PROBABLY TRUE
• Empirical research further demonstrates that variables that facilitate fluent processing (repetition,
contrasting background, rhyme) create the impression that a statement is true.
• This fluency– familiarity–truth link suggests that frequent repetition and design qualities can
increase the influence of a message beyond its effect on attention and retention. At the same
time, the fluency–familiarity–truth phenomenon presents a problem when we attempt to counter
misleading information (e.g., false rumours, myths, misleading ad claims).
• This experience of fluency can increase the perceived truth of the misleading statements,
rendering the attempt to correct them ineffective.
• Given this possibility, organizations may find it safer to refrain from reiterating false information
and instead try to make the true information as fluent and familiar as possible. When corrective
information is offered, it is important to ensure that the corrective information easily comes to
mind when the audience encounters the false information again.
FLUENCY AND RISK: IT’S HARD TO PRONOUNCE, IT MUST BE DANGEROUS
• People perceive technologies, investments, and leisure activities as less risky the more familiar
they are with them → Familiar = safe.
o In one study, participants perceived ostensible food additives with hard-to-pronounce
names (e.g., Hnegripitrom) as more harmful than food additives with easy-to-pronounce
names (e.g., Magnalroxate).
o In another study, participants perceived rides with difficult-to-pronounce names (e.g.,
Tsiischili) as more exciting and adventurous than rides with easy-to-pronounce names
(e.g., Chunta).
• Presumably, investment opportunities with easy-to-pronounce ticker symbols seemed less risky,
giving them a short-term advantage in initial public offerings.
• The link between fluency, familiarity, and risk perception has many practical implications. In some
cases, disfluency experiences may highlight the promise of adventure and excitement, e.g.,
bungee jumping, parachuting, or hang gliding. In other domains, however, such as insurance and
food, risk is undesirable.
FLUENCY AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS: IF IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE, IT WON’T HAPPEN
• The experience of fluency in creating mental images also affects how we estimate the likelihood
of undertaking specific actions, such as purchasing a product or helping a victim. The more difficult
it is to imagine the behaviour, the less likely we think we are to engage in it.
• Thus, in some cases, attempts to engage audience imagination may not only be ineffective, but
can backfire and produce the opposite of the intended effect.
• A more subtle implication concerns the effectiveness of hypothetical questions as an influence
strategy. A number of studies demonstrate that simply asking people about the likelihood that
they will engage in a behaviour can make them actually engage in the behaviour.
o One reason for the effectiveness of this approach is that, once presented with a
hypothetical question about engaging in an activity, people spontaneously try to imagine
this activity.
o When it is difficult to imagine the action in question, hypothetical questions will reduce
its likelihood.
FLUENCY AND EXPECTED EFFORT: IF IT’S HARD TO READ, IT’S HARD TO DO
6
