Lecture notes with Social Influence at the University of Groningen

Lecture 1

Social influence is the tactic of how to get people to do things. It helps to stir people in ways we want them to behave. There are four types of social influence tactics:

1. Establishing a favourable climate. This is done before the influence starts, creating a favourable environment.

2. Creating a relationship with the audience. This is about getting people to like you. Making your target more likely to comply.

3. Presenting the message in a convincing way.

4. Using emotions to persuade.

Another distinction to be made is between the basic processes behind social influence. There are two types of processes:

1. Informational social influence, due to our need for certainty. People want to make a correct decision.

2. Normative social influence, due to our need for affiliation. People want to be liked by other people.

People are not aware of the fact that they are being influenced. They are not aware of their lack of control in some information processes. Social influence is about figuring out the information processes people use to make decisions. When you know how these work, you can try to influence them. Some information processes run automatically and others are controlled.

We are aware of controlled processes, they are intended, controllable and are effortful. Automated processes are the processes of which people don’t know that they happen, we are not aware of them. The automated processes are uncontrollable, but really efficient. It costs no effort and saves time. Most of the time these processes work really well. We rely on them, but sometimes an automated process makes a mistake. We call the automated information processes we use heuristics.

A heuristic is an automated process. It has a fixed action pattern, so it does the same thing every time and in different situations. It works with readily accessible information, that is not always applicable, to decide. Heuristics are not always successful, but we do often use them, because they save time and energy, are efficient and are rational.

There are different kinds of heuristics:

• Because-heuristic. We are more likely to do someone a favour when they provide us with a reason to do so. Research showed that it doesn’t matter if the reason is legitimate. People will comply to your request more often if you give them a reason, even if it’s a bogus reason. This only applies to small requests.
  For big requests you need to have a really good reason.

• Expensive is good-heuristic. We think that if something is expensive it must be of good quality. This also results in the heuristic: cheap is bad. This heuristic tells us why discount works and offering products for free doesn’t. A discount initiates that a product has been expensive (=good), but now is cheaper, so you save money and buy a ‘good’ product. This sounds like a win-win situation. When you are offering products for free (=cheap) people think your product is bad, that is why you always have to indicate the price when you give something away for free.

• Effort-heuristic. If you have put a lot of effort in achieving something, you assume that the thing you achieved is worth a lot and you will treat it with respect. An example is if someone finds 200 euro they might spend it right away on something they don’t even need, but when they had to work for it and it is part of their salary, they will spend it wisely. Another example is playing hard to get. Someone has to work hard to get you, so they think you are worth a lot of effort, which is good.

• Rhyme-heuristic. When someone can think of something easily, they think it is a good brand or product, because they thought of that first. That is why rhyme-slogans work so well, they are easily remembered, so believed to be true.

• Easy to process-heuristic. If something is easy to process, we think it is true. An example is handwriting; sloppy and complex handwriting is less persuasive than an orderly and neat handwriting.

• Recognition heuristic. If we recognise things, we think they are more correct. This is also the case with multiple-choice exams, if you recognise an answer you are likely to choose that one.

• Similarity-heuristic. People make judgments based on similarity between current and already experienced situations. For example amazon uses this heuristic in showing books you might also like if you purchased a book.

• Stimulation heuristic. A near miss provokes a lot of emotions. It is more frustrating to have a 5,4 on your exam than it is to have a 2.

• Contrast-principle: If you show someone a really ugly house that is very expensive and after that you show someone a better-looking house that is less expensive. You will evaluate the second house much higher than if you would have seen another, more neutral, house before. If a second item is fairly different from the first, we perceive it as more different. Compromise-heuristic. If we have to choose between products we tend to take the middle option. If the bank offers three options: 2.9% interest for 5 years, 3.2% interest for 10 years and 3.0% interest for 10 years. People tend to take the middle option. If the bank only offers two options: 2.9% for 5 years, 3.2% for ten years. People are more likely to choose the first option. So it really makes a difference to add a third, unattractive option.

Social proof

Conformity is part of that. Conformity means that people like to conform to the way others behave. They do it to be liked; this is called normative social influence. They also do it to be right; this is called informational social influence.

Sherif (1936) made an experiment on this. He showed people a non-moving light and asked them how much it moved. In a dark room people don’t have a reference point, so the answers to his question varied a lot. When he put more people into one room and again showed the non-moving light, the answers people gave varied less. This shows that people conformed to each other’s answers.

Another experiment done on this subject has been performed by Ash. He showed people lines and asked which two were of the same length. This was really easy to see. He put one subject and five confederates in one room and asked them to give the right answer. The 5 confederates gave a wrong answer on purpose and even though people could see they were wrong, 32% conformed to the group.

If there is only one other person that says the right answer, it breaks the conformity, even if this is a blind man who can’t see the lines.

Moderators in conformity:

• Group size. The bigger the group subjects were in, the more often they conformed to the group. Group size has an influence on conformity. (for example the experiment with persons staring into a random spot in the sky.)

• Majority. What the majority thinks must be right or cool. (For example Uggs or Justin Bieber.)

• If the group is unanimous more people will conform.

• Low self esteem or ability will increase conformity.

• If a group consists of experts, professionals, important people or similar others people are also more likely to conform.

Social norms

Social norms are about what is commonly done or approved. There are two types of social norms:

• Injunctive norms: this is the behaviour that is commonly approved. The behaviour people like and is rewarded.

• Descriptive norms: this is the behaviour that most people carry out. People think this is the most effective or adaptive, because most people do it.

A descriptive norm has to be made salient in order to let people focus on the norm. If the norm is salient, people will focus on what other people were doing, the majority, and will carry out the same behaviour.

Lecture 2

Social norms

Clapping is a social norm we use. When everybody around us is clapping, we are also forced into it. Clapping or applauding has an effect on how you feel about what you have just seen. For example: a pop concert or a lecture. When you applaud at the end of something you will like and appreciate it more. Clapping is associated with positivism. There are two aspects of clapping:

• You see others clapping: This is social proof that others liked it as well.

• You see yourself clapping: You are clapping, so apparently you liked it. (Think about the effort heuristic we use.)

Social norms are really helpful in getting people to do something. For example: They are used in hotels. Hotels would like people to reuse their towels. There are several ways in which the hotel tries to tell people to do this. They can focus on the benefit for the hotel, when people reuse their towels it will save the hotel money. They can focus on the environmental benefit, if people reuse their towels; the hotel has to use less energy, which is environmentally friendly. They can focus on the benefit it has to future generations, trying to make people feel guilty. Finally they can focus on the descriptive norms, by saying that many other people also reused their towels. This last approach works the best, 41% of the hotel visitors reused their towels. Unfortunately this is also the least used approach. In the hotel-focussed approach 21% reused their towels and in the environmental- or future generation approach 31% of the visitors reused their towels.

Normative feedback is an efficient way in trying to get people to recycle more. If you tell people that their neighbours are recycling and they all find it really important, people will recycle more themselves.

People are not likely to admit that they do things, because others do so too. They like to think that they do it because they want to do something good, or because they themselves like it. People also don’t recognise that they are influenced so much by descriptive norms, so it is a sneaky way to influence people. An example given in the lecture is that people tend to give more to street musicians if their hat or something else people can put their money in is already full. They can see that other people also gave them money and are more likely to do so themselves. But if you ask them why they gave the musician money, they would never say it was because other people did so as well.

If people can see traces of behaviours of others they will conform their own behaviours.

Using social norms to influence people can also have a reversed effect.

If behaviour of many people is bad and it is pointed out that many people do it and that it is not good, people are more likely to do it as well. They are looking at the part of the message that many people do it and not at that part that tells them it is wrong. If many people did it, I can do it as well, what will it matter?

In this case it will work better to focus on the injunctive norm instead of on the descriptive norm. The injunctive norm tells people what is the most appropriate behaviour. A descriptive norm is the behaviour that most people carry out. In the case of unwanted behaviour that has to be discouraged, injunctive norms can be used best.

It is important to keep in mind which group you want to reach with your message. This is because of the same reason that is stated above: Descriptive norms can have positive results in some cases and negative results in other cases. For example: If you want to do something about the fact that students drink a lot and you tell people that many students drink too much and that this is a problem. It might work for the heavy drinkers, but it will encourage students that drink only a little to start drinking more heavily. Because they think that drinking much is the norm and they want to fit the norm.

It gets more complicated with prohibition signs. From Cialdini’s point of view prohibition signs are making injunctive norms and desired behaviour more salient and therefor will increase the likelihood of good/desired behaviour, but this is not always the case!

When the prohibition sign is in conflict with the descriptive norm, it will have a reverse effect on behaviour. People littered more in a littered environment with a prohibition sign than in a littered environment without a prohibition sign. This shows that prohibition signs did make behaviour salient, but in the wrong way. It focuses the attention on the fact nobody was following the rule of the prohibition sign (because the environment was littered). If nobody is following the rule, people think it is okay for them to also not follow it.

In conclusion a prohibition sign will have a positive effect when met by a descriptive norm, but a reverse effect when conflicted by the descriptive norm. Injunctive and descriptive norms are not strictly separated, but influence each other.

Social norms can be used in daily life. In the UMCG-hospital they don’t want people to smoke at the entrance. They placed a sign with their house-rules at the side of the entrance, but no one seems to obey this rule. Many people are smoking at the entrance. So what happens in this case is that there is a prohibition sign and people show conflicting behaviour (the smoking). This means that the prohibition sign will have a reverse effect and more people will start violating the rule. This is called a spreading effect.

There are two theories that try to explain spreading effects.

1. The broken window theory is based on the fact that if the environment has many disorders (broken windows, litter on the street, graffiti, etc.), there will be more violent behaviour.

2. The goal-framing theory states that there are different sorts of goals:
   - Normative goals: The behaviour that is appropriate.
   - Gain-goals: What do you want for your future? For example training to get a six-pack or studying to be an expert.
   - Hedonic goals: Is focussed on the present. What do you want now? What will make you feel good? For example feeling hungry or fatigued.
   These goals sometimes conflict. The hedonic goals are the strongest one’s that mostly win.
   The strength of the normative goal is weakened when people see other people not following the norms of behaving appropriately. This automatically makes people more hedonically driven.

Norm violation is not only common when people see others violate the same norm, but also if other people violated another, not related norm. This is called the cross-norm inhibition effect. An example is that if the environment is littered (violation of a norm), people more often will steal something (violation of another, non-related norm).

A moderator of norm violation is a group. People are more likely to conform to other’s norm violation if those others are members of your in-group. When out-group-members violated the norm, it showed a reverse effect. People wouldn’t comply to the norm violation and even showed better behaviour than when no body violated the rule. Social norms are more influential when others are present.

Lecture 3

Norms: rules that tell you what behaviour is relevant. Making our life as a group better. Are more influential when the group is actually there.

Social norms are more influential when others are present. This is shown in an experiment where people saw eyes looking at them or saw just flowers. In the eyes-condition people conformed more to the social norms. Being watched has impact on your behaviour, but only only if the participant thinks that the eyes are in agreement of the norm. That they think the person is watching them thinks the norm is important. Abstract eyes also had these effects.

The police find it interesting if security cameras have the same effect, but we don’t know the answer to that jet.

It also works the other way around. If people feel anonymous, they are less likely to conform to the norm. That is because they think nobody is watching them. People are more likely to conform when there is a likelihood of being sanctioned.

Respect is also a very good indicator of complying with the norm. If you see other people showing respect to a norm, you will also show more respect to norms. This is shown in an experiment with three conditions:

1. Garbage bags in the street (disrespect)

2. Control condition

3. Someone picking up his own litter

In the last condition people are more likely to pick up a bike that has fallen down than in the first. In the third condition 34% helped by picking up the bike and in the first condition only 7% helped. In another experiment they showed that even more people would help in another condition: Seeing someone else picking up someone else’s litter. The more respect other people show, the more respect you will show.

These outcomes relates to Cialdini’s salience. He thinks that seeing someone else picking something up from the ground makes the norm to keep the street clean salient. In the bike-experiment they think picking something up is a sign of respect and not of salience.

Moderators of when people will comply are:

• When the norm is made salient, more people will conform to the rule.

• How legit is the rule? How many people support this rule? The rule has to make sense for people to comply with it.

• Group identity. If an out-group member does something you are less likely to comply with the rule he states, than if an in-group member does the same thing.

• Social context. If the environment is clean you will also keep it clean and vice versa.

In the lecture a clip is shown where people are screaming and fighting with their neighbours. The message at the end of the clip is: Please don’t do this and behave yourselves. The clip shows people that many people scream and fight with their neighbours. The message people will remember is: Everybody is doing it, so it is okay for me to do so as well. This is a good example of using social influence in the wrong way.

Unethical behaviour

Theory of self-concept maintenance: People like to see themselves as a moral person. If you do something unethical, it is at the expense of your honest self-concept. After doing something unethical you will have to update your self-concept negatively. This feels terrible, beacuse we like to see ourselves as moral persons. That is why we try to avoid a negative update of the self by rephrasing what we have done. For example we didn’t steal it, but we tell ourselves we borrowed it. But rephrasing has a limit this is called malleability.

We only make a negative update if we put enough attention to the norm. If the norm is salient and we are aware of violating a norm, we are more likely to update our self-concept negatively. This is why in the beginning of a form there is a box you have to tick saying that you promise to fill out the form honestly. This makes the norm salient and people will fill out the form more honest.

People try to reduce bad feelings by doing something good. This is called moral cleansing and makes them feel better.

Confessions are there to get rid of the negative feeling. For example people donate more money before confession than after. After confession people feel relieved ad not guilty anymore. They don’t feel the need to restore their karma. Washing hands has the same effect, when people washed their hands they feel less guilty.

There are two other theories about unethical behaviour:

1. Moral accounting and licensing: Building up moral credits. For example installing solar energy plates is good for the environment, so you think you can take the car once in a while, because you already did so good. People see it as having karma to spend.

2. Pro environmental behaviour has an effect on your identity. If you think of yourself as environmentally friendly you will do environmentally friendly in different situations. It becomes part of your personality.

Scarcity

Scarcity is a strong mechanism. People don’t like to have the feeling of missing out on something or losing something. This is called loss-aversion. It is an example of a heuristic that people use to make decisions.

An example is: Testers of coke liked the Pepsi flavour more than the coca cola flavour. That is why coca cola changed its flavour. Costumers didn’t like the new coke flavour, because the old one was gone, scarce now, so they prefer the old one.

If something is really scarce it gets more valuable and people will want it more. Smart companies use this principle in practise. Examples are: something is only sold in one store (unique), if you don’t buy it now it may be gone (sale), it is a limited edition or only available for a limited time, it is no sold out/no longer in stock.

Another aspect why we are so sensitive to scarcity is, because we don’t like to lose our freedom. The reactance theory explains this: if personal freedom is threatened or reduced people are motivated to restore their freedom. For example: you can only drink at age 18, but this makes it more interesting for younger people. This also applies tto information. Ino court when you say you can’t use certain information, the jury will rely on the information more and think that information is the most important.

It is really effective to remind people of their freedom. It influences people’s likelihood to buy a product if it reminded them of their freedom. For example: Saying that you can send something back is important even though no one does it.

Scarcity doesn’t work when it is always scarce. It has to go from available to scarce for people to notice it. It triggers the feeling of losing something, which we don’t like, because of our loss-aversion. We also are more attracted to scarce products if we have to compete for them with others. This is a combination of two heuristics: scarcity and social proof, everybody wants it so it must be good and scarce=valuable.

When we obtain scarce items we feel self-worthy. Our decisions are based on anticipated regret: Focus people’s attention on the feeling they would have if they didn’t get it. That feeling is horrible and decision makers try to reduce it. This is used in the “postcode loterij” (postcode lotery). If you don’t buy a ticket, you miss out.

Lecture 4

There are three theories that can explain why people keep putting their bicycles in front of the library entrance.

1. Theory of normative conduct: All the other people are doing it, so it is apparently a norm. People see that others also park their bike in front of the entrance, so they think it is okay for them to do it as well. The prohibition sign, saying parking in front of the entrance is strengthening the effect.

2. Goal-framing theory: Students are in a rush, so they dislike the effort of parking their bike somewhere else. They choose for the hedonic goal: parking it in front of the entrance is the quickest.

3. Reactance: Take away the freedom of parking their bike in front of the entrance, so people park the bike there more to get back their freedom.

A solution for the bicycle problem in front of the library might be to make it uncomfortable to park there.

Helping behaviour.

Helping behaviour differs between countries. Some countries show more helping behaviour than others. Factors that correlate with helping behaviour are population density, population size, violent crime rate and wealth. Violent crime and wealth are the most influential factors. The more money a city has, the less help they offer.

Is helping behaviour dispositional or situational? If people are in a hurry they help less. This is a situational factor

Religion didn’t have an effect on helping behaviour. So helping behaviour is in this example not dispositional.

There is always the question: Why do we help? Is helping behaviour purely altruistic or is there always something in there for ourselves? Altruism is one helps another person for no reward, and even at some cost to oneself.

There are several explanations about why we help each other. Two evolutionary explanations of altruism are:

• Kin selection theory: helping people that have your genes. For example helping your child is safeguarding your genes.

• Reciprocity altruism theory: When you do something for someone else you expect that they will return the favour in the future. You expect reciprocity.

But if there is no chance of future encounters with the person you are helping, these theories are not applicable. Two theories that can apply in that case:

• Negative state relief model: Help to reduce distress by observing negative situations. We help people in order to help ourselves

• The empathy-altruism model: We help people because of our empathy for the person. This is a positive view on the matter.

We are more empathic for people that are similar to you. In a high empathy situation, people will help more. Even in an easy escape situation people with high empathic concern would still help. This research shows that empathy makes people altruistic.

Cialdini thought this conclusion was false, because even in the easy escape situation, people would still have the negative feeling of not helping afterwards, because they knew what was going to happen. He set up his own experiment where he tried to take away this negative feeling, by making the participants happy beforehand. He thought that if their mood increased, they wouldn’t need to use help as means to restore their mood. This changed the result. People with high empathy and an easy escape helped less when they were happy. High empathy participants and low empathy participants responded in the same way. This experiment shows that the participants helped for egoistical purposes. People that help others do this to increase their own mood and feel happy.

The presence of others has an effect on how people behave. If other people are present it can make you more active or more passive, depending on the situation.

Bystander effect: Pay close attention to other people to see if something is going on. People are less likely to help when there are people around. They look at what everybody else is doing. That must be the right thing. People are afraid to stand out of the crowd, and take action. When there are a lot of other people around responsibility diffuses. Responsibility reduced over the more people that are present. This leads to a principle called pluralistic ignorance: Looking at other people not doing anything. Conclusion: no help is needed. Misleading. What we think that others think of the situation.

People are more likely to help people they know. In an experiment some people met other participants beforehand (acquaintances) and others didn’t (strangers). Acquaintances were more likely to help if they heard another participant falling in the other room. Afterwards the experimenters asked the question: Do you think other people would also have helped? They answered yes. This might be the reason why they helped in the first place. People thought that others would help too, so that it was normal and logical to help. No free rider effect: you thought at forehand that the others would help as well. This is linked to the normative goal being strong. A strong hedonic need makes you less likely to help (helping is the normative goal). The longer you didn’t have a cigarette, the less likely you are to help. But if you just smoked, you are more likely to help, because the hedonic goal goes down again and the normative goal can go up.

If we are reminded of the normative goal, we are more likely to conform to it. An example is Christmas-songs. They make us more likely to help and show pro-social behaviour. The music reminds us of the pro-social norm.

We donate money to feel good about ourselves. Make the feeling that you would have when donating money salient. This evokes our caregiver role. We like to see ourselves as caregivers.

Liking

The more similar you are the more likely you are to help. We prefer people we know and like. If we feel empathy for a person it increases compliance with their feelings and thoughts. We can imagine how it is like when we would be in that position and therefore are more likely to do things in favour of the person.

Tupperware parties contain many aspects of social-influence techniques: Reciprocity, commitment, social proof, and liking. Before the buying begins everyone receives a small gift from the hostess (reciprocity). Guests are urged to describe publicly the uses and benefits of Tupperware products they already own (commitment). Other people ust like it too, because they are at the party to buy something as well (social proof. A Tupperware is hosted by a friend, who will profit from every piece sold (liking).

Albert Heijn increased their image by making friends and creating social bonds. They did this by introducing a very simple and likeable man in their advertising campaigns. Their image changed from very expensive and exclusive to normal and nice. This was beneficial in the crisis.

Factors that increase liking:

• Physical attractiveness. We like physical attractive people, because of the halo effect: One positive characteristic dominates the way the person is viewed, also in other domains. That is why we believe that attractive people are also more talented, kind, honest and intelligent. They get lower sentences in criminal trials and have a higher change of being hired for a job.

• Similarity. We like people that are similar to us. Similarity works without people knowing it. Automatically copy people in body language for example. We want people to be similar to us, because we like ourselves. In modelling, people that are like the audience have a lot of success. We like them more, because they are more similar.

• Compliments also evoke liking. Makes you more influential and people are more likely to go along with you. Even though you know they do it because they want you to do something. But the liking effects of compliments have a limit. We don’t like it when someone is doing exactly the same as you. This is threatening to your self-concept. Compliments don’t mean so much in the future if you get a compliment that you know is not true. Compliments have to be honest. That is why it works if people first say something negative and then compliment you. This technique gains trust and the compliments become more valuable.

• Contact and cooperation. We like people more if we see them on a regular content.

Lecture 5

If you are not really likeable, try to look good in comparison. Shine in the presence of even less likeable others. A good example is the good cop/bad cop technique. One cop is aggressive and horrible the other cop is nice. People will admit more to the good cop, because they look so likeable in comparison to the other cop. This is called the contrast principle. This technique also works, because of reciprocity; people want to return the favor of the good cop.

Another factor that causes liking is association. If you are present if someone receives bad news, this has a bad influence on your relationship. The person is associating you with negative news and negative feelings. This works the same with positive news. When you receive positive news from a stranger, you will like him or her more. This sounds like not helping people in bad times is a good idea, but the association will fade. You can use this principle in advertising: A sexy woman next to an expensive car makes you associate the car with sexiness. This also works with celebrities playing in commercials. You don’t even have to think the person is really using it, but still influences your opinion of the product.

Instead of being liked another salesman technique could be to be condescending. An arrogant salesman makes you want to show you are worthy of that product. This technique only works with really expensive goods.

After making a decision people become more confident of their decision, this is because people want to be consistent and minimize regret. We want to act in line of our beliefs, to avoid cognitive dissonance. To get rid of cognitive dissonance you can change behaviour or thoughts. It is easier to change a thought. That is why we convince ourselves we have made the right choice and feel better about that choice.

People feel obliged to keep their promise. A good example is calling people to ask them if they are going to vote, they say yes and feel like they have to keep their promise, and more people will go voting. This is used in America.

If behaviour is inevitable we try to convince ourselves that we already liked it all the time. If people have to do something, they will rate it more positively to convince themselves that the behaviour they will have to carry out is in line with their own beliefs.

The self-perception theory states that attitudes, emotions and internal states are inferred from observations of our own behaviour. Using the behaviour that you show as how you rate your own beliefs. If you do something you think that that is apparently how you think about it. Buying an environmentally friendly product focuses your attention on the fact that you bought this product and will make you behave more environmentally friendly in the future. The value of things goes up if you put a lot of effort in it. If the effort is too high people get out. Effort has to be increased step by step to be effective. Advantage of self-perception is that is very easy to apply, like all heuristics.

If people are certain about their behaviour and underlying attitudes cognitive dissonance has more effect. If people have less experience with the behaviour and no firm attitudes have been developed self-perception theory is more effective. Difference between the social perception theory and the cognitive dissonance theory is on how strong your attitudes are before hand.

We think consistency is a good quality of people. In politics this is very strong. Commitment is build upon consistency. It is a very strong influence tactic. We feel guilty if we don’t follow up to it. It is used on motivating people. Committing to something in public is really useful and effective.

An example of an experiment that shows people’s consistency: If you ask people if they could watch your things, people go to great lengths to protect other people’s stuff. This wasn’t a voluntary commitment, but people still acted consistent. If they didn’t commit on watching the stuff beforehand, almost no one would interfere with the thief.

We connect more beliefs to doing something than to not doing something. Active commitment is stronger than negative commitment. People start thinking about reasons why they did so and create a self-image that is consistent with the commitment.

Social proof is only effective if you didn’t commit to something beforehand. You are then less likely to change to the majority.

An example of commitment principle it the purity ring. Committing to not having sex before marriage by wearing a ring for everyone to see.

Written commitments are more influential than just stated commitments. We also think that people who wrote something have these beliefs as well.

Commitment is the most effective if it is active, public, effortful, irreversible, freely chosen, changes in self-image.

The foot-in-the-door technique is based on the fact that people like to be consistent. Start with a small request and than ask for a bigger favour. People will also accept the bigger favour, because they want to be consistent. Especially if the first one is a pro-social request, this makes you think about why you think this is important and you create a self image, you will be more likely to comply to the second, much bigger request.

Collective cultures show less consistency. They comply to first request, but not with the second one. They are not influenced by the media as much. In collectivistic cultures it is very influential if your family members comply with a request, if they do, you are also more likely to comply.

Labelling people is effective because we adapt our behaviour to the images others have of us. People act accordingly to their label. Change of self-image is long-lasting. People will start looking for evidence in the future that supports their self-image.

The low-ball technique is related to the foot in the door technique. You offer a very good deal to the costumer and change it in a negative way after that. People want to be consistent and even comply to the less attractive deal. You lure them in. People go along also because they already put in effort and don’t want to waste it.

The bade and switch technique is when people are lured in with an attractive deal and the whole deal gets cancelled. People then still tend to go along with a next not so attractive deal.

Lecture 6

Reciprocity

Reciprocity is all about giving and taking. People feel that it is the norm to return a favour. It is a strong norm instilled in people. It can be used as an influencing technique. The advantages of using this technique are that you give something without actually losing. It creates dependencies that bind individuals together.

There are two evolutionary explanations for altruism:

• Kin selection: The degree of altruism depends on the number of shared genes. Helping someone to help your genes surviving in the long run. An example of the kin selection theory is the behaviour of Meerkats. Meerkats look out for danger. If they see danger, they will scream, which is risky for getting a lot of attention from the danger. They show this risky behaviour to protect the group, and thus their kin.
  In people the kin selection theory has also been proved. When people share the same family name, going on with a request or promise is more likely, because having the same family name shows having similarity in genes.

• Reciprocal altruism theory: Reciprocity is seen as the mechanism behind altruism in this theory. Altruism is based on the fact that someone will do something for you in return.

The ultimatum game is about dividing ten euros between you and other. The other can refuse or accept the money. When the offer is refused, nobody gets money. When it is accepted you get the offered amount of money. We reject offers that are unequal and unfair (less than 20% is rejected). Out of an economic viewpoint 20% is better than nothing, but we don’t act totally economic. We reject the money to punish the other. The majority of people offer between 40-50%. Monkeys do decide on an economic viewpoint and just take every offer, even when the division is unequal.

People follow the norm of reciprocity to avoid social disapproval and are afraid that violations of the principle will be sanctioned.

Liking only counts when there is no gift. So liking and reciprocity are not related to each other. You don’t have to be likable to have the favour returned.

For the reciprocity principle to work someone has to do something for you first and then ask for a favour in return. When someone offers you something, provided that you perform a favour first, there is no sense of social obligation to cooperate with someone. This way it looks more like a deal than like a favour.

Reciprocation is very powerful principle, because people feel obliged to accept the gift, because it is impolite to reject a gift. Furthermore people are often surprised, the power lies in the hand of the giver and it reduces the target’s free choice. We are easily manipulated into unfair changes, because people ask a big favour in return, people feel relieved after complying to the request and people want to avoid social disapproval. When you avoid accepting favours, when you are not able to repay, you can avoid to be manipulated by the principle. Emotions as gratitude and guilt are powerful motivators of reciprocation.

A recently received favour is more valuable than a favour received further back in time. People forget about the favours you have done. If you forget to return a favour, the first favour’s value increases over time. Reciprocity is more powerful in the short term, then people still link the two favours.

The ‘that’s not all’ technique is about adding something extra to the deal. This has a big effect. This technique is used in Tellsell programmes.

In the door-in-the-face technique someone first does a big request and then a small one. Going from a big to a small request is seen as a concession. A concession is seen as a favour and people feel obliged to return it. It is also because of the contrast effect that the second request appears a lot smaller. We feel more obliged to follow our promise of really carrying out the second request. It is one thing to promise something, but is another thing to keep your promise. Complying with the second request also has an effect on future behaviour. People start thinking that they really want it, because they put a lot of effort in it.

When trading a pool table, it is better to start at 3000$ and go down, than to start at 329$ and go up. When trading down people feel like you did concessions and want to return the favour. The anchor-point and contrast effect also play a role in this experiment. Starting at a high price makes people think that the pool table is of a higher value.

The effects of using the reciprocity principle to influence people may backfire. The door-in-the-face technique may have negative outcomes such as people not living up to the verbal agreement made with the requester or distrusting the manipulative requester.

Nudging

Context and accessibility change our perceptions of things. Nudging is all about softly guiding, a nudge in the right direction. It is based on libertarian paternalism and choice architecture. Libertarian paternalism is in freedom of choice trying to influence people to make better choices. Choice architecture is arranging the choices so that people pick what is best for them. Examples of nudges:

• Expecting error. Examples:

  • Before you can take your train-ticket you have to take out your bankcard. Otherwise many people forget their bankcard when they are in a rush.

  • Tank-cap attached to the car, so that you don’t leave it on the roof.

  • Urinals with game or target to aim at--> 80% spill reduction

• Designing defaults

  • Opting in or opting out system in being a donor has a big effect on results.

  • Free choice is nice till a certain point; people don’t want too many choices.

• Exploiting social norms

• Providing feedback

  • Camera with sound, otherwise you keep on pushing

  • White paint that is pink when it is wet and turns white when it dries.

  • Emoticons in speed-cameras. Can also be negative, because you see what others before you did. If they are all speeding, it is a descriptive norm and people are more likely to violate the speed limit as well.

• Simplifying complex choices, for example the ‘stemwijzer’ when you have to go vote. This is the reason why people don’t switch from insurance company or energy applier, because the choices are too complex!

• Improving incentives

• Exercising self-control

  • Traffic light with a bar saying how long it will take till you can cross the road

Nudges can also backfire. For example a sign with a warning for pickpockets is actually a nudge for the pickpocket himself. People will feel where their wallet is when they see the sign and it becomes easier for thieves to steal them, because they now know where someone carries his/her wallet.

When people are confronted with a social descriptive norm, people will comply to the norm. If you show people what the average energy usage is of their neighbourhood, people with low energy use will start using more. To avoid this reversal effect in low consumers an injunctive norm can be added. For example a smiley face when their usage level is below average. Make an incentive norm useful or fun. (for example piano stairs or footstep traces.)

Lecture 7

Emotion appeals

If someone provides you a favour, for you, the perceived value of that favour will decrease over time. The foot-in-the door technique is explained by the desire to keep commitment and act consistently.

Emotional appeals: Use recipient’s subjective feelings, affect, arousal, emotions, and tension states as the basis for securing influence. The feelings of the persons you try to influence can be used as a social influence technique. Emotion makes people more susceptible to you asking for a favour.

One of the basic processes of emotional appeals is to arouse the emotion and than offer the target a way of responding to that emotion that just happens to be the desired emotion. Another one is that the target becomes preoccupied with emotion, unable to critically analyse and thus complies or target channels all thoughts and energies toward removing the threat, not think about much else.

An example is that when pedestrians that jaywalked across the street heard a whistle a negative emotion would come up, because they did something bad and a police whistled at them. After discovering that it wasn’t a police officer that made the sound, the pedestrians were very relieved. This relief modus made the pedestrians more likely to comply with a request.

Another theory that can explain these results is the goal framing theory. The whistle that people hear is the same as a normative norm becoming more salient. When a normative norm has become salient, people are also more likely to comply to a request, because another normative norm is for example helping each other. The theory of self-concept maintenance could also give an explanation for the willingness to comply to the request. People feel negative after jaywalking and want to restore that feeling by complying to the request. This will make them feel better.

Emotions that help in persuading someone are fear, mood, flattery and guilt. Guilt builds upon reciprocity and commitment. Emotions make us less rational. The stronger the emotion the less rational the reaction. An emotion gives of the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Research on this topic showed that emotions evoked by the cuteness of a panda will lead to less rational decisions. They asked participants: ‘How much money would you be willing to pay to save 1 or to save 4 pandas’. When pandas were represented by dots people were more willing to pay more money to save 4 pandas than they would want to pay to save 1. When pictures of pandas represented the pandas, participants were not willing to pay more for four pandas. They would pay the same for one as they would want to pay to save four. So when cuteness and emotion is involved, people become less rational. The feeling of saving one panda would feel equally good as the feeling of saving four pandas, so when lead by emotions, people don’t want to pay more.

The impact of bonuses on people can have reverse effect. When people are paid a huge amount of money to perform a simple task, people perform better. However when performing a cognitive demanding task people performed worse, because of the fear of losing the money.

The affect heuristic makes decisions guided by emotions. It uses emotions to guide your decision-making. For example buying a house, because it feels good. Of course this is not a good reason to buy a house, but many people use this as a well enough argument.

Fear appeal use fear inducing techniques to influence behaviour. The more fear, the more effective. This is only the case in short term on people with high self-esteem. In high fear conditions people, with high self-esteem are more willing to stop smoking. In the long run however, people with low self-esteem and people with high self esteem will react the same to fear appeal: When there is no way to cope effectively with threat, bury your head in the sand.

If there is too much fear people close the gate and don’t let information in anymore. If you affirm them beforehand (provide participants with positive info about themself before fear appeal) fear appeal is effective and people are open to critique.

Theories on fear appeals:

• Affective perspective: drive theories. People want to flee from the negative emotion you gave them. Fear appeal is effective if a sufficient level of fear is induced, sufficient reassuring recommendations are given; levels of fear that are too high are counterproductive.

• Cognitive perspective: focussed at cognitive processes that are triggered by fear appeal. How people look at the treat in itself and how the appraise the coping part. Severity of threat, susceptibility of threat, response efficacy, self efficacy are important in how people respond to the fear appeal.

People in states of high fear had more favourable attitudes and stronger intentions to get a tetanus shot. However high efficacy (the fact that clear instructions were given) did not affect attitudes and intentions, but did affect behaviour. No fear appeal and only giving information to try to convince people doesn’t work at all.

When fear goes up, people rely more on strong arguments. The strength of the arguments becomes more important. If anger is induced, people become more superficial on the role of the argument.

Vivid appeal: It is effective to make something emotionally interesting. Emotions are better remembered. Ask people to just think about how it would be like, has a great effect on behaviour.

There is a difference between emotions and moods. Emotion is a strong affective reaction directed at a person and mood is an affective reaction not related to a specific target. Moods stay longer; are a more general state.

In a positive state people rely more on superficial information, heuristics and shortcuts.

Affect-as-information: When your mood is positive, you think your environment and the things you do or have are also more favourable. I feel good, so the product must be good. The great wine on vacation, doesn’t taste the same at home. Emotions play an important role when we are in a hedonic mood, not when we are focussing on a normative goal.

Authority

Self-perception theory proposes that people infer their attitudes from their behaviour.

The elaboration likelihood model is about processing information. In this model there are two routes of processing information: The central route and the peripheral route. The central route processes information carefully and takes argument strength into account. The peripheral route is based on heuristics processing and is more automatic.

The ELM-model resembles the systems explained in Kahneman’s article. He talks about: System 1, which is fast, automatic, and effortless and system 2, which is about reasoning, controlled, and slow.

Authority is often used as a heuristic. People’s position or expertise is used to convince people to follow you or listen to you. For example doctors or professors, that are used in commercials to tell you how good the product is. There are two kinds of authority: The use of expertise and the use of positions (for example someone dressed in a suit or uniform.)

A good example of the power of authority is the Milgram experiment. Where participants gave big electrical shocks to others, because the professor said so.

Factors that influence the results of the experiment are:

• Slippery slope: small steps are treacherous. When taking small steps people don’t mention the big difference between the first and the last request. This principle is used in the Milgram experiment; small steps in increasing the electricity were used.

• Proximity to the victim. The closer the victim, the less obedience

• Proximity to the experimenter. More people gave a high electrical shock, when the experimenter was in the same room, rather than on the phone.

• Group effects/conformity. When another peer gives the shock, the participant is likely to do so as well.

• Legitimacy of the experiment

• Fairness of the experiment

• Aggression, when the participant chooses the shock-level himself, and there is no aggression present, no one will choose high shocks.

Two explanations that explain why people are so sensitive to authority:

1. The theory of conformism by Ash: A subject, who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave the decision making to the group and it’s hierarchy. The group is the person’s behavioural model.

2. Agentic state theory: Where, according to Milgram, the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow.

Identifying who is the most important in a group can be of huge importance. Everyone listens and copies the leader.

Titles convey expertise and inspire deference. Authority influences how tall people are perceived. The more authority, the taller someone was rated. Politicians are seen as taller after winning the elections.

Clothing can convey authority, for example uniforms have a big impact on obedience. The wearing of the uniform also influences the wearer himself, they will act more confident.

The higher the authority, the more likely people we are to go along with a request. People will do more effort. We don’t seem to correct people in high positions. This is because people attribute their mistake to the situation instead of t to he person. Or we simply are more afraid to correct high status people.

Norm violations that bring something for society bring power (Robin Hood). These violations are perceived as positive. People are more likely to go along with you in the violations, when it is someone with authority.

If the boss is not complying to the rules himself, the employees won’t comply either. It is a condition for other people to comply to rules that the boss complies to them himself.

A judge is more influential than a criminal. Except when the criminal is claiming to get a higher sentence. The criminal goes against his/her self-interests and therefore people listen more to the criminal.

People don’t want to be the criminal in the eyes of the child. People smoke less when there are children present. Will it help to place big posters of babies?