Sary's notes on Influence

People simply like to have reasons for what they do. Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library's copying machine: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I'm in a rush?* The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: 94 percent of people let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?* Under those circumstances, only Go percent complied.

However, a third type of request showed this was not the case. It seems it was not the whole series of words but the first one, because, that made the difference. Instead of including a real reason for com-pliance. Langer's third type of request used the word because and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: "Excuse me. I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?" The result was once again nearly all (93 per-cent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information was added to justify their compliance.

Notice, as in the case of the turquoise jewelry buy-ers, it was someone who wanted to be assured of good merchandise who disdained the low-priced item. I'm confident that besides the expensive = good rule, there's a flip side, an inexpensive = bad rule that applies to our thinking as well. After all, in English, the word cheap doesn't just mean inexpensive; it has also come to mean inferior.

… When a day later it dawned on the jeweler what had happened, he called his friend and asked him to come back to the store because he had another necklace to show him. This time, he introduced the new piece at its regular $500 price. His friend liked it enough to buy it on the spot, But before any money was exchanged. the jeweler told him that, as a wedding gift, he would drop the price to $250. The man was thrilled. Now, rather than finding the $250 sales price offensive, he was overjoyed-—and grateful —to have it.

We're now in a position to explain the puzzling result of the chapter's opening study-the one showing that people given a drink said to boost problem-solving ability solved more problems when they paid more for the drink. The researchers traced the finding to the expensive - good stereotype: people reported expecting the drink to work better when it cost $1.89 versus $0.89; and, remarkably, the mere expectanon fulfilled imelf.

participants were given a pain reliever before receiving small electric shocks. Half were told the pain reliever cost $0.10 per unit while the other half were told it cost $2.50, Although, in actuality, all received the same pain reliever, those who thought it was more expensive rated it much more effective in dulling the pain of the shocks.

"If an expert said so, it must be true." As we will see in chapter 5, there is an unsettling tendency in our society to accept unthinkingly the statements and directions of individuals who appear to be authorities on a topic. That is, rather than thinking about an expert's arguments and being convinced (or not), we frequently ignore the arguments and allow ourselves to be convinced just by the expert's status as "expert."

The contrast principle, which affects the way we see the dif. ference between two things that are presented one after another. If the second item is fairly different from the first, we tend to see it as being more different than it actually is. So if we lift a light object first and then lift a heavy object, we estimate the second object as being heavier than we would have estimated it if we had lifted it without first lifting the light one.

Clothing stores instruct their sales personnel to sell the costly item first. They behave in accordance with what the contrast principle advises: sell the suit first, because when it comes time to look at sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high in comparison. The same principle applies to a man who wishes to buy the accessories (shirt, shoes belt) to go along with his new suit. Contrary to the commonsense view, the evidence supports the contrast-principle prediction.

The salesman—we can call him Phil-was to give me tips to help me through my break-in period. One thing I quickly noticed was that whenever Phil began showing a new set of customers potential buys, he would start with a couple of undesirable houses. I asked him about it, and he laughed. They were what he called "setup" properties. The company maintained an unappealing house or two on its lists at inflated prices. These houses were not intended to be sold to customers but only to be shown to them so that the genuine properties in the company's inventory would benefit from the comparison.

I heard a desk agent announce that the flight was overbooked and, if passengers were willing to take a later plane, they would be compensated with a voucher worth $10,000! Of course, this exaggerated amount was a joke. But I noticed that when he then revealed the actual offer (a $200 voucher), there were no takers. In fact, he had to raise the offer twice to $300 and then $500 before he got any volunteers. That was an expensive laugh. It cost his airline an extra $300 per volunteer. He could have started with a $2 joke offer and then revealed the true-and now much more attractive sounding—$200 amount. Under those circumstances, I'm pretty sure he would have secured his laugh and his volunteers.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: The rule says that we should try to repay what another person has provided us. If a woman does us a favor, we should do her one in return; if a man sends us a birthday pres-ent, we should remember his birthday with a gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party, we should be sure to invite them to one of ours.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: Researchers working with charity fundraisers in the United Kingdom ap. proached investment bankers as they came to work and asked for a large charitable donation a full day's salary, amounting to over a thousand dollars in some cases. Remarkably, if the request was preceded by a gift of a small packet of sweets, contributions more than doubled.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: I have been working for this same boss for six years now, and I have experienced the same thing. He gives me and my son gifts for Christmas and gives me presents on my birthday. There is no promotion for the type of job I have and my only choice is to take a test with the state system and reapply to move to another department or maybe find another job in a private company. But I find myself resisting trying to find another job or move to another department. My boss is reaching retirement age and I am thinking maybe I will “”be able to”” move out after he retires because for now I feel obligated to stay since he has been so nice to me.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: One of the reasons reciprocation can be used so effectively as a device for gaining another's compliance is its power. The rule possesses awesome strength, often producing a yes response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of indebtedness, would have surely been refused.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: Regan was also investigating how liking for a person affects the tendency to comply with that person's request. To measure how liking toward Joe affected the subjects' decisions to buy his raffle tickets, Regan had them fill out several rating scales indicating how much they had liked Joe. He then compared their liking responses with the number of tickets they had purchased from Joe. He found subjects bought more raffle tickets from Joe the more they liked him. This alone is hardly a startling finding; most of us would have guessed that people are more willing to do a favor for someone they like.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: A more interesting finding was that the relationship between liking and compliance was completely wiped out in the condition under which subjects had been given a Coke by loe. For those who owed him a favor, it made no difference whether they liked him or not; they felt a sense of obligation to repay him, and they did.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: The subjects who indicated they disliked Joe bought just as many of his tickets as did those who indicated they liked him. The rule of reciprocation was so strong it simply overwhelmed the influence of a factor-liking for the requester-that normally affects the decision to comply.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: At the start of a cross-country flight, I was assigned an aisle seat in a row of three. Even though I preferred the aisle, I switched seats with a man in the window seat who said he was feeling claustrophobic about being pinned next to the wall for five hours. He expressed profound thanks. The rest of the flight was amazing. The two men next to me began a conversation that revealed how much they had in common. I could tell a friendship was budding. Yet whenever the man on the aisle had something to offer us—cashews, gum, the sports section of the newspaper, he offered it to me first, sometimes pushing it right past the face of his new pal. I remember thinking, "Wow, it didn't matter which of us he was sitting closer to or had more in common with or was talking to; I was the one he owed, and that mattered most."

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: If I were to give advice to someone who'd just received thanks for a meaningful favor, I'd warn against minimizing the favor in all-too-common language that disengages the influence of the rule of reciprocation: "No big deal." "Don't think a thing about it." "I would have done it for anybody." Instead, I'd recommend retaining that (earned) influence by saying something such as, "Listen, if our positions were ever reversed, I know you'd do the same for me." The benefits should be considerable.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: Various types of organizations have learned to employ the power of a small gift to spur actions that would have been otherwise withheld. Survey researchers have discovered that sending a monetary gift (e.g., a silver dollar or a $5 check) in an envelope with a mailed questionnaire greatly increases survey completion rates, compared to offering the same monetary amount as an after-the-fact reward.

Ch.2 RECIPROCATION: My colleagues Steve ]. Martin and Helen Mankin did a small study showing the impact of giving first in a set of McDonald's restaurants located in Brazil and Colombia. In half of the locations, the children of adult customers received a balloon as they left the restaurant. In the other half of the locations, the children received a balloon as they en-tered. The total family check rose by 25 percent when the balloon was given first. Tellingly, this included a 20 percent increase in the purchase of coffee— an item children are unlikely to order. Why? As I can attest, a gift to my child is a gift to me.