Commitment and consistency

• Cognitive dissonance
• Self-perception
• Social norm
• Self-persuasion

Question

• Dice game
• Make a bet: what number?
• How confident are you about your bet? (5-point-likert scale)

Self-persuasion

• We are more confident about our chances of winning AFTER placing a bet than immediately before laying down a bet
• Convince our self we have made the right choice and feel better about the choice (self-persuasion)   
• More satisfied about purchases when you have made your decision
  
  • Products have more favorable and less unfavorable aspects when choices have been made
• Minimalize regret
• With which question can you increase voting by 20% ? Do you expect to vote? (yes = social desirable)

Cognitive dissonance

• Discrepancy between beliefs and behavior causes psychological tension (cognitive dissonance)
• Motivated to reduce the discrepancy
• Changing beliefs or behavior
• After a (behavior) choice has been made: we fool ourselves to keep our belief consistent with what we have already done or decided: rationalize decision

Theory of self-concept maintenance

• A gain at the expense of honest self-concept
• Try to avoid negative update of self-concept: when starts this?
• What influences whether we update?

Negative update?

• Categorizing: act as less dishonest
  • E.g. taking €1,- VS a pen
  • Malleability (extent to which you can reinterpret: pen is borrowing, money is stealing)
  • Limit (severity of dishonest behavior: taking someone’s life is bad bc you cant give it back)
• Attention to (own) moral standards
  
  • Internal awereness
  • Salience of moral standard, personal norms

Attention to moral standards

• 229 students
• Solve set of puzzles
• €10,- per solved puzzle
• X
• Manipulation
  
  • Recall books
  • Recall 10 commandments

• • Control (experimenter checks answers)
  • Recycle (take work sheet, report correct answers on paper)

If you set a person in front of the mirror they get more focused on their own personal norms

Self awareness

• Making personal norms more salient
• Ciadini et al.
• People are more inline with personal norm in front of a mirror
• In crime places there are placed a lot of mirrors: not only to see your personal norms, but also the idea that many people are able to see you.

If you can buy a stolen bike from someone in Groningen you probably would take a crappy student bike, but if the person wants to give you a beautiful mom-bike with 2 kids seats you are getting suspicious and won’t take it.  

Justification: an experiment

• Tedious and meaningless tasks
  • Evaluated very negatively
• Ask participants to persuade other students to participate as well
  
  • Compensation €1 or €20
• Task rated more positively when €1, why? Because they make it nicer in their head; the intrinsic motivation gets greater

Self-perception theory

• Attitudes, emotions, and internal states are inferred from observations of own behavior (no dissonance relieve)
• I told the task was interesting, so I must have liked the exercise more than I originally thought

Advantages Self-perception

• Convenient, effortless, efficient (like all heuristics)
• Safe hiding place for troubling realizations
  
  • Rather not aware of some things
• Easier to change beliefs than behavior

Experiment

• Children had to eat vegetables they did not like
• Some were told it was inevitable: they had to eat more in the future
• These children convinced themselves that it was not that bad
  
  • Higher acceptance
  • Like the vegetables more

Initiation ceremonies

• Value membership more if you have gone through a great deal of trouble to attain it
• Cognitive dissonance, self perception --> rationalize
• Increases commitment
• Increases group cohesion and chance of group survival
• Effort is an indicator for us how much we like a person (I do all this for this person, (s)he must me amazing) also with products: the more effort it takes to produce an object, the higher people rate the quality of the object, and the more they like the object (e.g. baking a cake yourself or only adding water): IKEA effect
• Ikea does the same: you buy the thing and you have to put it together yourself. The effort that is involved in this process makes you like the product more.

Effort: perception of other

• Symbolic attributes
  • Your behavior signals who you are
• The more costly the behavior the stronger the signal (if a bio store is 20km away and you go there you really want to, if you buy bio in the nearest supermarket its less impressive)

Cognitive dissonance or self-perception?

• If people are certain about their behavior and underlying attritudes: cognitive dissonance
• If people have less experience with the behavior and no firm attitudes have been developed: self-perception

Consistency highly valued

• Inconsistent persons seen as confused, two-faced, mentally ill
• Consistency associated with personal and intellectual strength
• Consistency = logical, rational, stable, honest (something from the West: USA. Adapting is more valuable in the East)
• Once we make a choice or take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment (norms)

Commitment

• Written or verbal pledge or promise to engage in specific actions
• People feel obligated to keep their promise
  
  • Prevent feeling guilty, feel proud of yourself
  • Bring self-image in line with action
• Think of new reasons to support decision (remember the dice)

Experiment

• Making reservation in restaurants
• No show was 30%
• What question reduced this to 10%? ‘Will you call if you have to cancel the reservation?”

• Experiment at 7:00 am
• 2 conditions:
  
  • (1) inform students on time: 24% participants
  • (2) first ask wheter they are willing to participate (56% yes, commitment), then mention time
    
    • No one changed their mind
    • 95% actually participated

• Setting: beach
• Confederate
• Conditions:
  
  • Control
  • Experimental: “could you please watch my things?”

Signing petition

• Researchers asked ½ of the residents in an apartment complex to sign a petition to create a recreation centre for the handicapted.
• 2 weeks later, all residents were approached and asked to donate money to the cause.
• This reflects a two-step process for the ½ of participations who signed the petition.

 People want to be in line with their attitude and their behaviors.

Experiment: active VS passive commitments

• Volunteer for AIDS education project
  • 1) active commitment: fill out form stating they wanted to participate
  • 2) passive commitment: not filling out a form stating they didn’t want to participate (stand up if you… all the people who sit will promise something)

Our self-image is more in line with the things that we do, than the things that we don’t (I am a student, I work here… NOT: I am not a scholar, I don’t own a bike..)

We need more reasons for an action: sign for being a donor, why do I want to be a doner?

Public VS private commitments

• Public commitments are more effective than personal commitments
• Example: higher chance of hung juries when opinions are expressed visible show of hands rather than by secret ballot

Field experiment

• Energy conservation
• Conditions:
  
  • Public commitment
  • Private commitment
  • Control group
• In case of public commitment lower rate increase in electricity consumption than other groups

• Reduce natural gas consumption
• Public commitment: names to be published in newspapers as fuel-conversing citizens
• Saved more energy than control group
• Names not published after all
  
  • Even higher savings
  • Rationalize own behavior? No external motivation/minimal justification?

Practice

True Love Waits. Safe yourself for after the marriage. This is done publicly (not in your room) at the age of 12/14. The ring is a beautiful reminder of the commitment; and everybody sees the ring so everyone knows you have made the commitment. You get reminded often.

Hypocrisy reduction

• Person makes a public commitment
  • Asked to tell teenagers to practice safe sex
• Make them mindful of past failures to meet their commitment
  
  • Fill out questionnaire on past sexual practice
• More likely to adopt advocated behavior
  
  • More likely to practice safe sex
  • Adjust behavior to expressed beliefs
• Cognitive dissonance: changing your behavior is a way out. But what if they change their believe? (I thought I wanted to stay save for my health but now I think about it I have smoked hundred of times so it must be not that important to me)  

Written commitment

• Physical evidence
  • Not able to deny or forget
• Can easily be made public
  
  • Persuade public that the author believes what was written
  • Tendency to think written statement reflect true attitudes, even if they know the person did not freely choose to write it down

Door-to-door sales companies

• Ask client to fill out the sale agreement, i.e. a written commitment
• I like …(brand/companie), because
  
  • You start to believe more in what you have written

Commitment is more effective if

• Active
• Public
• Effortful
• Irreversible
• Freely chosen
  
  • Accept inner responsibility
    
    • Toy (robot) experiment: make promise to robot (you internalize it)
  • No external attribution
• Changes in self-image (social desirable things)

Foot-in-the-door-technique

• Start small and build
• When people comply with a small request, ask them to comply with a more substantial once
• Initial commitment crucial factor

Why is this effective?

• Cognitive dissonance: I complied, so probably I agree
• Change self-image to be consistent with the deed
• Commitment
• Desire for consistency
• Even more extensive compliance may result that is consistent with new self-view

Self generated persuasion

• Design (subtle) situation so that the target group generated arguments in support of your position thereby persuading themselves
• Example: study by Lewin
  
  • People who generated their own arguments for serving sweetbreads nearly 11 times more likely to actually serve it than people who attended a lecture

Labeling technique (self fulfilling prophecy)

• We adopt our behavior to the images others have of us
• Hidden self produce
  
  • People who were told they were considered charitable people gave more money to charity
  • People who were told they had a higher than average change of voting and participating in politic actions coted more often
  • Bogus person test: you are kind VS intelligent person

Low-ball technique

• Offer a good deal
• Customer decides to buy it (commitment)
• Customer develops new reasons to support their choice

• Original purchase advantage is removed
• Normally, the person would have not purchased the product, but now does
• Also sunk cost: invested time, effort