1.It’s worth trying to understand why, since the publication of Influence, I haven’t had to confront any of the indignant condescension Boyle (2008) forecast, including from the most hawkish of my academic colleagues. I think there are two main reasons. First, unlike the popularized forms of social science seen in the “human interest” articles of daily newspapers, I made a concerted effort to cite the individual publications (hundreds of them) on which I based my statements and conclusions. Second, rather than seek to elevate my own investigations or any particular grouping of investigations, I sought to elevate a particular approach to investigating human responding—the approach of experimental behavioral science. I didn’t intend it at the time, but the disarming effect on my fellow experimental behavioral scientists may affirm a belief I’ve long held: people don’t sink the boats they are riding in.
2.Alas, a bit of Internet research revealed that I can’t attribute the origin of the insightful quote to my grandfather. It comes from his famous countryman Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
1.It is worth noting that I have not included among the seven principles the simple rule of material self-interest: that people want to get the most and pay the least for their choices. This omission does not stem from any perception on my part that the desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs is unimportant in driving our decisions. Nor does it come from any evidence I have that compliance professionals ignore the power of this rule. Quite the opposite; in my investigations, I frequently saw practitioners use (sometimes honestly, sometimes not) the compelling “I can give you a good deal” approach. I chose not to treat the material self-interest rule separately in this book because I see it as a motivational given, as a goes-without-saying factor that deserves acknowledgment, but not extensive description.
1.The energy-drinks experiment was conducted by Shiv, Carmon, & Ariely (2005). At the time I read their article (and thought to myself, What?), I was purchasing energy drinks to help me finish a big writing project with a fast-approaching deadline. Before seeing the study’s results, I would never have guessed that getting the drinks on sale, which I tried to do whenever possible, would make them less effective for me.
2.A complete description of the mother-turkey experiment is provided in a monograph by M. W. Fox (1974)—honest, this animal researcher’s name is Fox. Sources for the robin and bluethroat information are Lack (1943) and Peiponen (1960), respectively.
3.Perhaps the common “because . . . just because” response of children asked to explain their actions comes from their shrewd recognition of the unusual amount of power adults assign the word because—because it implies a reason, and people want reasons to act (Bastardi & Shafir, 2000). In an instructive chapter, Langer (1989) explores the larger implications of the Xerox study (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978) and makes the case for the widespread presence of automatic responding in human behavior—a position shared by Bargh & Williams (2006).
Although several important similarities exist between this kind of automaticity in humans and lower animals, there are important differences as well. The automatic behavior patterns of humans tend to be learned rather than inborn, more flexible than the lockstep patterns of the lower animals, and responsive to a larger number of triggers.
4.Cronley et al. (2005) and Rao & Monroe (1989) have shown that when people are unfamiliar with a product or service, they become particularly likely to employ the expensive = good rule. In marketing lore, the classic case of this phenomenon is that of Chivas Regal Scotch Whiskey, which had been a little-known, struggling brand until its managers decided to raise its price to a level far above that of its competitors. Sales skyrocketed, even though nothing was changed in the product itself (Aaker, 1991).
Besides the energy-drink (Shiv, Carmon, & Ariely, 2005) and pain-reliever (Waber et al., 2008) studies, others have found that people see a higher-than-warranted connection between an item’s price and its quality and then allow this misguided connection to influence their responses (Kardes, Posavac, & Cronley, 2004). A brain-scan study helps explain why the expensive = good stereotype is so powerful. When tasting the same wine, tasters not only rated themselves as experiencing more pleasure if they thought it cost $45 versus $5, their brains’ pleasure centers actually did become more activated by the taste of the presumed “$45” wine (Plassmann et al., 2008).
5.For evidence of the need for and value of automaticity in our lives and of how the automaticity reveals itself in judgmental heuristics, see Collins (2018); Fennis, Janssen, & Vohs (2008); Fiske & Neuberg (1990); Gigerenzer & Goldstein (1996); Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky (1982); Raue & Scholl (2018); Shah & Oppenheimer (2008); and Todd & Gigerenzer (2007). Petty et al. (2019) offer multiple examples of how, unless they have both the motivation and ability to examine incoming information carefully, people rely on heuristics in responding to the information. The comprehensive-exams study (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman (1981) is one of those examples; see Epley & Gilovich (2006) for yet another.
It’s instructive that even though we often don’t take a complex, deliberative approach to personally important topics (Anderson & Simester, 2003; Klein & O’Brien, 2018; Milgram, 1970; Miller & Krosnick, 1998), we want our advisers—our physicians, accountants, lawyers, and brokers—to do precisely that for us (Kahn & Baron, 1995). When feeling overwhelmed by a complicated and consequential choice, we still want a fully considered, point-by-point analysis of it—an analysis we may not be able to achieve except, ironically enough, through a shortcut: reliance on an expert. An account by Thomas Watson, Jr., the former chairman of IBM, offers graphic evidence of the phenomenon in another example of Captainitis. During World War II, he was assigned to investigate plane crashes in which high-ranking officers were killed or injured. One case involved a famous air-force general named Uzal Girard Ent, whose copilot got sick before a flight. Ent was assigned a replacement who felt honored to be flying alongside the legendary general. During takeoff, Ent began singing to himself, nodding in time to a song in his head. The new copilot interpreted the gesture as a signal to him to lift the wheels. Even though they were going much too slowly to fly, he raised the landing gear, causing the plane to drop immediately onto its belly. In the wreck, a propeller blade sliced into Ent’s back, severing his spine and rendering him a paraplegic. Watson described the copilot’s explanation for his action:
When I took the copilot’s testimony, I asked him, “If you knew the plane wasn’t going to fly, why did you put the gear up?”
He said, “I thought the general wanted me to. He was stupid.” (1990, p. 117)
Stupid? I’d say, in that singular set of circumstances, yes. Understandable? In the shortcut-demanding maze of modern life, I’d also say yes.
6.Apparently, the tendency of males to be bamboozled by powerful mating signals extends beyond fireflies (Lloyd, 1965) to humans. Two University of Vienna biologists, Astrid Jütte and Karl Grammer secretly exposed young men to airborne chemicals (called copulins) that mimic human vaginal scents. The men then rated the attractiveness of women’s faces. Exposure to the copulins increased the judged attractiveness of all the women and masked the genuine physical-attractiveness differences among them (Arizona Republic, 1999). Although romance is not at issue, certain primitive pathogens also mimic chemical substances to render healthy bodies (cells) receptive to them (Goodenough, 1991).
An array of examples of how nature’s plant and animal fraud artists operate is described by Stevens (2016). Examples of the similar tricks of human fraudsters can be found in Shadel (2012) and Stevens (2016).
7.For a full account of the Cornell researchers’ study, see Ott et al. (2011). The comparisons between online-review readers in 2014 and 2018 was provided by Shrestha (2018). In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint against the owner of a cosmetics company accused of creating false product reviews. The complaint included a quote from the owner to her employees that illustrates how well the manufacturers of fake reviews understand their potency: “If you notice someone saying things like I didn’t like ‘x’ about it, write a review that says the opposite. The power of reviews is mighty; people look to what others are saying to persuade them and answer potential questions they have” (Maheshwari, 2019).
By no means was my friend original in her particular use of the expensive = good rule to snare those seeking a bargain. Thirty years of research indicates that the strategy of marking an item as “Reduced from . . .” works extremely well (Kan et al., 2014). Indeed, retailers have been using it successfully even before researchers confirmed its effectiveness. Culturist and author Leo Rosten gives the example of the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Harry, who owned a men’s tailor shop in Rosten’s neighborhood in the 1930s. Whenever Sid had a new customer trying on suits in front of the shop’s three-sided mirror, he would admit to a hearing problem and repeatedly request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had found a suit he liked and asked for the price, Sid would call to his brother, the head tailor, at the back of the room, “Harry, how much for this suit?” Looking up from his work—and greatly exaggerating the suit’s true price—Harry would call back, “For that beautiful, all wool suit, forty-two dollars.” Pretending not to have heard and cupping his hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply, “Forty-two dollars.” At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, “He says twenty-two dollars.” Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the shop with his expensive = good bargain before poor Sid discovered the “mistake.”
8.Alexander Chernev (2011) conducted the study on calorie counts. The experiment showing a decline in sexual attraction to current mates after exposure to naked bodies in the media was done by Kenrick, Gutierres, & Goldberg (1989). Other researchers have found similar effects on attraction to works of art, showing that an abstract painting will be rated as significantly less attractive if viewed after a higher-quality abstract painting than if viewed by itself (Mallon, Redies, & Hayn-Leichsenring, 2014). Evidence that the contrast effect can operate without cognitive recognition (Tormala & Petty, 2007) is reinforced by evidence that it even works on rats (Dwyer et al., 2018).
1.Certain societies have formalized the rule of reciprocation into ritual. Consider, for example, the Vartan Bhanji, an institutionalized custom of gift exchange common to parts of Pakistan and India. In commenting upon the Vartan Bhanji, Alvin Gouldner (1960) remarks:
It is . . . notable that the system painstakingly prevents the total elimination of outstanding obligations. Thus, on the occasion of a marriage, departing guests are given gifts of sweets. In weighing them out, the hostess may say, “These five are yours,” meaning “These are a repayment for what you formerly gave me,” and then she adds an extra measure, saying, “These are mine.” On the next occasion, she will receive these back along with an additional measure which she later returns, and so on. (p. 175)
The original holiday-card study was done by Phillip Kunz (Kunz & Woolcott, 1976) and, in a noteworthy instance of continuity, was extended a quarter-century later by his behavioral-scientist daughter Jenifer Kunz (2000), who found a stronger reciprocation rate if the sender of the first card was of high status. Access to a fuller account of the request for a day of pay from investment bankers can be found at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/203286/BIT_Charitable_Giving_Paper.pdf (pp. 20–21).
The desirability of reciprocal exchange within and between societies was recognized by social scientists long before sociologists such as Gouldner (1960), archaeologists such as Leakey and Lewin (1978), and cultural anthropologists such as Tiger & Fox (1989). See, for example, Bronisław Malinowski’s groundbreaking ethnographic examination of the trading patterns of Trobriand Islanders, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). More recent evidence shows that the rule doesn’t only apply to positive exchanges; it fuels negative ones as well (Hugh-Jones, Ron, & Zultan, 2019; Keysar et al., 2008), all of which fits with W. H. Auden’s famous line of poetry: “I and the public know / what every schoolboy learns / Those to whom evil is done / do evil in return.” More generally, it can be said that the rule of reciprocation assures that whether the fruit of our actions is sweet or bitter, we reap what we sow (Oliver, 2019). This is also true of human–machine exchanges. Users who had received high-quality information from a computer then gave better information to that computer than to a different one; what’s more, users receiving low-quality information from a particular computer retaliated by providing it lower-quality information than that given to a different computer (Fogg & Nass, 1997a). In general, reciprocity in all of its forms is a driver of human conduct (Melamed, Simpson, & Abernathy, 2020).
2.The longevity of Ethiopia’s obligation to help Mexico (“Ethiopian Red Cross,” 1985) and Lord Weidenfeld’s obligation to help Christian families (Coghlan, 2015) may be outdone by the case of a group of French children’s cross-generational desire to aid a group of Australian children they had never met. On April 23–24, 1918, near the end of World War I, several battalions of Australian soldiers lost their lives freeing the French village of Villers-Bretonneux from German forces. When, in 2009, the schoolchildren of Villers-Bretonneux learned of a bushfire that destroyed the Australian town of Strathewen, they collected $21,000 to help rebuild Strathewen’s primary school. According to one newspaper account, “They knew little of the children they would be helping. They only knew their great-grandparents had promised 91 years ago never to forget Australia and the 1200 Australian solders who died liberating their village” (The Australian, 2009).
Although highly consequential and memorable first forms of assistance, like those covered above, can create lasting feelings of obligation, it would be a mistake to think all such actions do the same. In fact, there’s good evidence that everyday favors lose their obligating powers as time passes (Burger et al., 1997; Flynn, 2003). One set of studies even found that recipients feel most indebted to a favor-doer before the act is completed (Converse & Fishbach, 2012). The upshot? Small acts of help conform to the “rule of the bagel”: People appreciate them more when they are warm and fresh than cold and old.
3.Even before they enter school, children come to understand the obligation to give back after receiving and to respond accordingly (Chernyak et al., 2019; Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2010; Yang et al., 2018). The Regan (1971) study was conducted at Stanford University. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Joby Warrick (2008) reported the case of the indebted Afghan tribal chief, which fits with related evidence that, in the Middle East, “soft” methods, such as reciprocity-inducing favors, bring better results than coercive interrogation techniques involving deprivation, hardship, or torture do (Alison & Alison, 2017; Ghosh, 2009; Goodman-Delahunty, Martschuk, & Dhami, 2014). For links to additional such evidence, see www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/the-science-of-interrogation-rapport-not-torture.html.
4.The data pattern of the $5-“gift check” experiment (James & Bolstein, 1992) fits with newer research showing that surveys providing payment before participation (wherein the money is included in a request letter) get more compliance than those providing equal or larger payment after participation (Mercer et al., 2015). It fits as well with a study in which hotel guests encountered a card in their rooms asking them to reuse their towels. They also read either that the hotel had already made a financial contribution to an environmental-protection organization in the name of its guests or that it would make such a contribution after guests did reuse their towels. The before-the-act donation proved significantly more effective than the after-the-act one (Goldstein, Griskevicius, & Cialdini, 2011). Waiters’ gift of a candy before patrons paid their checks significantly increased tips by Americans in a New Jersey restaurant (Strohmetz et al., 2002) and by guests of each of seven nationalities in a Polish restaurant (Żemła & Gladka, 2016). Finally, the McDonald’s gift-balloon study was done by my Influence AtWork.com colleagues Steve J. Martin and Helen Mankin in conjunction with Daniel Gertsacov, at the time the chief marketing officer of Arcos Dorados S.A., which owned the McDonald’s locations. For additional details on this and other McDonald’s studies done by our team, see www.influenceatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Persuasion-Pilots-McDonalds-Arcos-Dorados-INFLUENCE-AT-WORKpdf.pdf.
The benefits of giving first in business are presented and traced forward particularly convincingly in a pair of books by Adam Grant (2013) and Tom Rollins (2020). For a humorous illustration, see https://youtu.be/c6V_zUGVlTk. For a collection of reciprocity-based approaches favored by e-marketers, see https://sleeknote.com/blog/reciprocity-marketing-examples.
5.It’s not just the case that drug companies’ gifts affect scientists’ findings about the effectiveness of their drugs (Stelfox et al., 1998), such gifts also affect physicians’ tendencies to prescribe them. Pharmaceutical-industry payments to doctors (for educational training, speaking fees, travel, consulting fees, conference registrations, and so on) are linked to the frequency of doctors’ prescriptions for the sponsored drugs (Hadland et al., 2018; Wall & Brown, 2007; Yeh et al., 2016). Even the low price of a single free meal is enough to do the trick—although more expensive meals are associated with higher prescription rates (DeJong et al., 2016). Studies showing the effects of donations to legislators are described by Salant (2003) and Brown, Drake, & Wellman (2014).
6.The most thoroughgoing scholarship supporting the new account of how the Cuban missile crisis ended belongs to Sheldon Stern (2012), who served for twenty-three years as the historian at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. See also Benjamin Schwartz’s enlightening review at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190.
7.The candy-shop research was performed by Lammers (1991). In another purchasing pattern that fits with the rule of reciprocation, supermarket shoppers given a surprise gift coupon for a particular type of item then bought significantly more additional items from the store, resulting in a 10 percent increase in total purchase size (Heilman, Nakamoto, & Rao, 2002). The Costco experience was described by Pinsker (2014). Anderson & Zimbardo (1984) reported on the reciprocity-rule wisdom of Diane Louie at Jonestown.
8.The key ring–versus-yogurt data pattern (Friedman & Rahman, 2011) also appeared in a supermarket study (Fombelle et al., 2010) that gave entering shoppers either a nonfood gift (key ring) or a food-related gift (Pringles chips), which increased overall purchases by 28 percent and 60 percent, respectively. Michael Schrange (2004) wrote the article describing the disappointing results of a hotel chain’s seamless customer-experience program on customer satisfaction. Customizing the gift to the need doesn’t just work in commercial settings. Giving support within a relationship leads to greater relationship satisfaction only when it fits the recipient’s current need (Maisel & Gable, 2009).
9.Paese & Gilin (2000) demonstrated the force of unsolicited favors within negotiation situations. Unsolicited cooperative offers produced return acts of cooperation from recipients even when doing so ran counter to their financial interests. In a real-world illustration of the influence of uninvited favors, Uber was able to significantly increase ridership in Boston after giving the city an unsolicited gift: During the 2013 city-bus strike, the company rented buses and provided free service to all Boston public schools.
Marcel Mauss published his masterwork The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies in 1925, but an excellent English translation can be found in a 1990 reprint published by Routledge.
10.Although it is clear that we dislike those who take without giving in return (e.g., Wedekind & Milinski, 2000), a cross-cultural study has shown that those who break the reciprocity rule in the reverse direction—by giving without allowing the recipient an opportunity to repay—are also disliked for it. This result was found to hold for each of the three nationalities investigated—Americans, Swedes, and Japanese (Gergen et al., 1975). There’s ample evidence that people frequently fail to ask for aid to avoid feeling socially indebted (DePaulo, Nadler, & Fisher, 1983; Greenberg & Shapiro, 1971; Riley & Eckenrode, 1986). One study is noteworthy for its ten-year duration and its investigation of a dilemma many of us have faced: whether to ask friends and family to help us relocate to a new residence or to give the entire task to commercial movers. The study found that often people avoid enlisting the help of those they know, not from fears that these nonprofessionals would damage valuable property but from fears of the “indebtedness” such assistance would generate in them as a result (Marcoux, 2009).
Other research has pointed to the driving force of indebtedness in reciprocal exchanges. For example, Belmi & Pfeffer (2015), Goldstein, Griskevicius, & Cialdini (2011), and Pillutla, Malhotra, & Murnighan (2003) identified a main reason that giving first can work so well: it produces a sense of obligation on the part of the recipient to give back. Still, it’s worth noting that in the family of factors related to reciprocity, obligation has an equally active but sweeter sister—gratitude—that operates to stimulate returns, not so much because recipients of favors feel a sense debt but because recipients feel a sense of appreciation. Although both feelings reliably spur positive reciprocation, gratitude appears to be related to the intensification of relationships rather than just the instigation or maintenance of them. Evidence in this regard is available in the research of Sara Algoe and her associates (Algoe, 2012; Algoe, Gable, & Maisel, 2010; Algoe & Zhaoyang, 2016).
George, Gournic, & McAfee (1988) did the research attesting to the perceived sexual availability of a woman who allows a man to buy her drinks. See Clark, Mills, & Corcoran (1989) for a review of data demonstrating a difference in the type of reciprocal norm that applies among family and close friends (communal norm) versus strangers (exchange norm). More recently, Clark et al. (2010) showed that strong communal norms inside a marriage are associated with marital success. Kenrick (2020) offers an updated perspective on the distinction between communal and exchange norms that applies to friendships; see http://spsp.org/news-center/blog/kenrick-true-friendships#gsc.tab=0.
11.The results of my team’s zoo-trip experiment were reported in Cialdini et al. (1975). The Israeli study of the effects of unreasonable first requests was conducted by Schwarzwald, Raz, & Zvibel (1979). The rejection-then-retreat technique has proved successful in other cultures as well, such as Greece (Rodafinos, Vucevic, & Sideridis, 2005). Perhaps my favorite such demonstration occurred in France, where patrons of three restaurants were asked by their server as she cleared the table whether they’d like dessert. If a patron said no, the waitress immediately retreated to a proposal of coffee or tea, which nearly tripled the percentage of such orders. What I found particularly instructive appeared in another condition of the study in which, rather than immediately retreating to a proposal of coffee or tea, the waitress waited three minutes to do so. In this treatment, hot-drink orders only doubled (Guéguen, Jacob, & Meineri, 2011). Apparently, the finding that the obligation to reciprocate small favors declines over time (Flynn, 2003) also applies to the obligation to reciprocate small concessions.
12.As I’ve claimed, the findings that the rejection-then-retreat tactic leads its targets to be more likely to actually perform a requested favor (Miller et al., 1976) and to agree to perform similar favors (Cialdini & Ascani, 1976) are consistent with the resulting feelings of responsibility and satisfaction that were found in the UCLA experiment (Benton, Kelley, & Liebling, 1972). Recall that there was another result of the UCLA experiment—starting with an extreme position and then retreating to a moderate one proved much more effective than starting with a moderate position and sticking to it. That outcome is consistent with the negotiation lesson learned by the Canadian pet-supply business owners described on p. 38. The studies by Robert Schindler of retail customers’ satisfaction levels were published in 1998.
1.The data on the percentage of Americans who believe humans evolved entirely through natural processes came from a Pew Research Center survey (www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/11/darwin-day), which also documented the large role of religious belief in resistance to evolutionary theory. Analyses by Andrew Shtulman (2006) and Dan Kahan (www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2014/5/24/weekend-update-youd-have-to-be-science-illiterate-to-think-b.html) show the lack of relationship between the understanding of evolutionary theory and belief in it. The quote from medical-malpractice attorney, Alice Burkin, came from an interview with Berkeley Rice (2000).
The George Clooney and Emma Watson research (Arnocky et al., 2018) is more instructive than I have described, owing to a pair of additional experimental procedures. The first extended the breadth of the basic effect by demonstrating that the liked celebrities’ opinions had the power not only to increase acceptance of evolution but to decrease it as well. When some study participants were led to believe that Clooney or Watson had commented favorably about an anti-evolutionary book, support for evolutionary theory dropped significantly among these observers. So liking’s influence isn’t a one-way street; it can route attitudinal traffic in positive or negative directions. A second experimental procedure reinforced the wisdom of using liked (rather than authoritative) communicators to create change on the topic. The researchers showed a different sample of participants favorable commentary, purportedly written by a professor of biology from a prestigious university, regarding either a pro-evolutionary or anti-evolutionary book. The expert’s opinion—for or against evolution—had no significant effect on participants’ acceptance of the theory. Here we see the clearest evidence I know for why science communicators’ crusades to heighten support for evolution have failed over the years: they’ve chosen the wrong battlefield on which to strike.
2.The evidence showing that it’s the quality of the social connections—rather than of the physical products—that determines buying within a Tupperware party comes from studies by Taylor (1978) and Frenzen & Davis (1990). For a financial analysis of how Tupperware Brands has successfully employed principles of social influence, especially in emerging markets, see https://seekingalpha.com/article/4137896-tupperware-brands-sealed-nearly-20-percent-upside?page=2. As a testament to the social basis of Tupperware products’ success, after the coronavirus threat emerged worldwide in February 2020, Tupperware Brands share price dropped severely on the New York Stock Exchange. The drop (of 90 percent of its value from the previous February) was due in large part to perceptions that gatherings, even of friends, were no longer considered safe by consumers.
The Nielsen Company survey showing greater trust for a liked friend’s recommendation is described at www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2012/trust-in-advertising--paid-owned-and-earned.html. But this pattern reverses when liking for the known friend turns into disliking, such as typically occurs with an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend. In that case, consumers are 66 percent less likely to trust their ex’s product opinion than an online reviewer’s: www.convinceandconvert.com/word-of-mouth/statistics-about-word-of-mouth. In either instance, liking seems to be a key. The research on the profitability to a bank of referred customers is described at https://hbr.org/2011/06/why-customer-referrals-can-drive-stunning-profits.
3.The idea that physical attractiveness creates a halo effect for other judgments is not new. Consider Leo Tolstoy’s 120-year-old assertion: “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is good.” Support for the broad (Langlois et al., 2000), immediate (Olson & Marshuetz, 2005), and early (Dion, 1972; Ritts, Patterson, & Tubbs, 1992) effects of physical attraction in a variety of social (Benson, Karabenic, & Lerner, 1976; Chaiken, 1979; Stirrat & Perrett, 2010), professional (Judge, Hurst, & Simon, 2009; Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994; Hamermesh, 2011; Mack & Raney, 1990), and political (Efran & Patterson, 1976; Budesheim & DePaola, 1994) arenas is historically strong. A more recent review (Maestripieri, Henry, & Nickels, 2017) not only updates this support but also offers an evolutionary explanation for much of the basic effect: our positive feelings and beneficial behaviors toward attractive individuals flow from automatic, overgeneralized romantic feelings toward them.
4.The work measuring infants’ favorable feelings toward similar others was performed by Hamlin et al. (2013), using puppets whose taste preferences (for crackers versus beans) were similar to or different from the infants’. The online dating preference study was performed by Levy, Markell, & Cerf (2019). The unthinking impact of similar dress styles in an antiwar demonstration was seen at a time of great civil conflict over the American war in Vietnam (Suedfeld, Bochner, & Matas, 1971). The effects of seemingly trivial similarities such as fingerprint type on helping were obtained by Burger et al. (2004). Name similarity’s positive effect on brand preferences and survey responding was demonstrated, respectively, in five separate experiments by Brendl et al. (2005) and in a pair of studies by Garner (2005).
5.Similarity’s broad influence is evident from its impact in educational settings (DuBois et al., 2011; Gehlbach et al., 2016; Marx & Ko, 2012) as well as on bargaining outcomes (Moore et al., 1999; Morris et al., 2002), voter choices (Bailenson et al., 2008), romantic feelings (Ireland et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2004; Ohadi et al., 2018), and hostage negotiations (Taylor & Thomas, 2008). Its utility is clear from evidence that influence targets underestimate its force (Bailenson & Yee, 2005; Gonzales et al., 1983) as well as from its coached enhancement of restaurant servers’ tips (van Baaren et al., 2003), electronics salespersons’ profits (Jacob et al., 2011), negotiators’ outcomes (Maddux, Mullen, & Galinsky, 2008; Moore et al., 1999; Morris et al., 2002; Swaab, Maddux, & Sinaceur, 2011), and speed-daters’ romantic wins (Guéguen, 2009).
6.The idea that people typically attend more to differences than commonalities was supported by Houston, Sherman, & Baker (1991) and Olson & James (2002); however, these results were found in Western cultures. Although I know of no research into the matter, it would be worth knowing if the same pattern would appear in Eastern cultures, where, traditionally, harmony is emphasized. The analysis of thirty-two negotiation studies involved more than five thousand participants and was performed by Thompson & Hrebec (1996). The research demonstrating that people initially underestimate the favorability of their later interactions with out-group members (Mallett, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2008) found that men and women were equally susceptible to this mistake. Apparently, women’s well-known tendencies toward interpersonal harmony are not enough to protect them from this error when another is from an out-group.
7.The brain-imaging study was conducted at UCLA’s Brain Mapping Center by Sherman et al. (2016). It is interesting that in the context of studies showing that compliments delivered by humans stimulate significant amounts of liking in response (Higgins & Judge, 2004; Seiter, 2007; Seiter & Dutson, 2007), the authors of the study of machine-based compliments have argued that their results are due to the same psychological tendencies and that, therefore, designers should build frequent praise into software programs (such as “Your careful work is impressive” or “Good thinking!”) and to do so “even when there may be little basis for the evaluation” (Fogg & Nass, 1997b).
8.The study showing that our susceptibility to praise that is insincere or offered in pursuit of a clear ulterior motive (Drachman, deCarufel, & Insko, 1978) has been supported by subsequent research (Chan & Sengupta, 2010; Vonk, 2002). I’m as susceptible as anyone. After my election to a certain scientific society, I received a congratulatory note from one of my state’s elected representatives praising my “dedication to excellence.” Although I knew the note was an electoral tactic designed to curry favor, I liked her more afterward. See Vonk (2002) for evidence that observers who suspect a flatterer is being insincere assign the flatterer an ulterior motive for the praise; thus, although recipients of flattery tend to believe both sincere and insincere praise, there is a penalty for insincere flattery—surrounding onlookers register it for what it is and dislike the flatterer.
9.I am not the only one who has trouble giving compliments. Most people do—for one reason, they underestimate the positive effect of compliments on recipients (Boothby & Bons, 2020; Zhao & Epley, 2020). The tendency of people to arrange to be associated with good news and avoid being associated with bad news, even if they didn’t cause it, has been confirmed by Rosen & Tesser (1970); furthermore, this tendency seems to appear because people recognize that they acquire the character of the messages they bring (John, Blunden, & Liu, 2019). The advantage that behind-the-back compliments have of avoiding the perception of an ulterior motive is considerable. Research by Main, Dahl, & Dark (2007) shows that in situations where an ulterior motive is suspected, flattery has an automatic negative impact on trust.
10.Altercasting was first described as an influence technique by sociologists Eugene Weinstein and Paul Deutschberger (1963); since then, its theoretical development has been advanced primarily by the psychologist Anthony Pratkanis (2000, 2007; Pratkanis & Uriel, 2011). Journalist Elizabeth Bernstein (2016) has provided a popular-press account of how altercasting works; see www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-want-to-persuade-people-try-altercasting-1473096624. It’s demonstrably the case that attributing a praiseworthy trait to either children (Cialdini et al., 1998; Miller, Brickman, & Bollen, 1975) or adults (Kraut, 1973; Strenta & DeJong, 1981) can produce more trait-like behavior as a consequence.
11.The study of true-versus–reverse-image photographs (Mita, Dermer, & Knight, 1977) has been extended in research by Cho & Schwarz (2010). Instructions for how to reverse the image of a selfie can be found at https://webcazine.com/17190/qa-can-you-flip-or-mirror-a-picture-using-the-native-photo-editor-on-samsung-galaxy-phone. The positive effect of familiarity on liking has been reported in multiple settings (Monahan, Murphy, & Zajonc, 2000; Moreland & Topolinski, 2010; Reis et al., 2011; Verosky & Todorov, 2010).
Evidence that people come to believe the communications they are exposed to most frequently is both disturbing and compelling (Bornstein, Leone, & Galley, 1987; Fang, Singh, & Ahulwailia, 2007; Moons, Mackie, & Garcia-Marques, 2009; Unkelbach et al., 2019), as is work indicating that the effect applies even to implausible claims such as those characteristic of “fake news” (Fazio, Rand, & Pennycook, 2019; Pennycook, Conner, & Rand, 2018). One set of reviewers of the truth-by-repetition phenomenon attributes it to a “fluency” effect in which repetition causes an idea to be easier to retrieve, picture, and process, giving it the psychological “feel” of the truth (Dechêne et al., 2010). Although acknowledging the role of fluency, other researchers have also pointed to the role of salience (the extent to which an item captures attention) in why relatively more exposures to an item make it seem more worthy (Mrkva & Van Boven, 2020).
12.Not only have researchers documented the beneficial effects of positive contact on attitudes toward out-group members, such as individuals of different race (e.g., Onyeador et al., 2020; Shook & Fazio, 2008), ethnicity (e.g., Al Ramiah & Hewstone, 2013; Kende et al., 2018; Jackson et al., 2019), or sexual orientation (e.g., Tadlock et al., 2017); several have offered reasons for the benefit—including reduced anxiety (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006; Wölfer et al., 2019), increased empathy (Al Ramiah & Hewstone, 2013; Hodson, 2011), and greater openness to experiences (Hodson et al., 2018).
Reasons for the failure of greater contact to improve attitudes in the schools (Stephan, 1978) can be understood as flowing from tendencies for racial self-separation (Dixon, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2005; Oskamp & Schultz, 1998) and for multiple negative experiences there, which reverse increased contact’s positive effect and turn it more intensely negative (Barlow et al., 2012; Ilmarinen, Lönnqvist, & Paunonen, 2016; McKeown & Dixon, 2017; Richeson & Shelton, 2007).
13.The long quote describing the competitive nature of the typical American classroom (Aronson, 1975, pp. 44, 47), as well as evidence of the transformative impact of the jigsaw classroom program can be found in the work of Elliot Aronson and his collaborators (see Aronson et al., 1978, for a summary). Other versions of cooperative learning procedures in different school systems—and even different types of institutions such as business organizations (Blake & Mouton, 1979)—have produced similar outcomes (Johnson, 2003; Oskamp & Shultz, 1998; Roseth, Johnson, & Johnson, 2008).
14.The classic research of Sherif and coworkers (1961) has been supported by other researchers (Paolini et al., 2004; Wright et al., 1997), who confirmed that a shift from rivals to friends is made possible by the shift from competition to cooperation. The studies showing that beginning a negotiation with a handshake enhances the joint outcomes of the bargaining parties (Schroeder et al., 2019) makes me think the effect might be strengthened if, after a lunch break, the parties shook hands again. Although considerable evidence establishes the typical superiority of cooperative approaches to other forms of interpersonal orientations (Johnson, 2003; Roseth, Johnson, & Johnson, 2008; Stanne, Johnson, & Johnson, 1999), it would be naive to think that cooperative acts would be always best or even always effective. For instance, if a bargainer were to initiate a handshake every few minutes throughout a negotiation, my guess is that the tactic would foster suspicion and the effect would be toxic. As other research has indicated, installing cooperative-learning programs isn’t universally successful (Rosenfeld & Stephan, 1981; Slavin, 1983), competition can sometimes prove useful (Murayama & Elliot, 2012), and invariant prescriptions for cooperation can backfire (Cikara & Paluck, 2013).
The conception of hell and heaven attributable to Rabbi Haim of Romshishok appears in analogous versions within Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu religious traditions. Although the details can change—for instance, instead of rigid elbow joints, inhabitants can be equipped with spoons or chopsticks too long to feed themselves—the lesson of cooperation as a heavenly solution to human problems surfaces in each.
15.It’s remarkable how innocent the delivers of bad news were in studies showing resulting hostility toward them from recipients. In any rational view, they were not responsible for the distasteful news; they had just been assigned to report it and gave no indication of enjoying doing so (Blunden, 2019; Manis, Cornell, & Moore, 1974). There’s no doubt that such innocent associations apply to both negative and positive connections; for example, listening to liked or disliked music affects product preferences favorably or unfavorably, respectively (Gorn, 1982). For additional evidence of the two-way impact of mere associations, see Hofmann et al. (2010), Hughes et al. (2019), and Jones (2009). The evidence that observers assume we have the same traits as our friends (Miller et al., 1966) and that an attractive model in an automobile ad influences men to like the car more (Smith & Engel, 1968) has been long available.
The findings on the effects of credit cards on willingness to pay (Feinberg, 1986, 1990) have been extended by McCall & Belmont (1996) to the size of tips in restaurants and by Prelec & Simester (2001) to payments for tickets to a sports event; in the latter case, fans were willing to spend over 100 percent more to see a professional basketball game when paying by credit card versus cash.
16.The paragraph-long commentary on today’s “natural-is-better bias” came from Meier, Dillard, & Lappas (2019). The Olympic Games aren’t the only sports events that corporations spend big money to sponsor. For the 2018–19 season, corporate sponsorships of the National Football Association totaled $1.39 billion. When Papa John’s Pizza ended its sponsorship as “Official Pizza of the NFL,” Wall Street investors took note, and its stock price dropped by 8 percent immediately (https://thehustle.co/why-do-brands-want-to-sponsor-the-nfl). Journalists have documented the impact of popular cultural phenomena on purchases of incidentally related consumer products such as Mars candy bars (White, 1997) and the Nissan Rogue (Bomey, 2017). But it was researchers who uncovered the connection of Sale signs to purchasing rates above those warranted by financial savings (Naylor, Raghunathan, & Ramanathan, 2006).
17.Of course, Gregory Razran’s (1938, 1940) “luncheon technique” research was preceded by Pavlov’s (1927) discovery of classical conditioning on which the technique is based. Li et al. (2007) performed the work extending Razran’s findings regarding smells to odors so faint that subjects could not knowingly sense them. The evidence is overwhelming that, like Pavlov’s dogs, we can be susceptible to strategically fashioned pairings and clueless about our susceptibility. For instance, to the delight of advertisers, simply superimposing a brand of Belgian beer five times onto pictures of pleasant activities, such as sailing, waterskiing, and cuddling, increased observers’ positive feeling toward the beer (Sweldens, van Osselaer, & Janiszewski, 2010); similarly superimposing a brand of mouth-wash onto pictures of beautiful nature scenes six times led observers to feel more favorably toward the brand right away and still three weeks afterward (Till & Priluck, 2000); and subliminally exposing thirsty people eight times to pictures of happy (versus angry) faces just before having them taste a new soft drink caused them to consume more of the drink and to be willing to pay three times more for it in the store (Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005). In none of these studies were the participants aware they’d been influenced by the pairings. Just because we are often surreptitiously influenced by mere associations doesn’t mean we don’t recognize how they work, as is evident from the research (Rosen & Tesser, 1970) on our strong proclivity to connect ourselves to good news and distance ourselves from bad news.
18.Although my research team (Cialdini et al., 1976) conducted the original basking-in-reflected-glory research on American football fans, it has been replicated with French and English soccer fans (Bernache-Assolant, Lacassagne, & Braddock, 2007; Fan et al., 2019) and postelection voters in the Netherlands and the United States (Boen et al., 2002; Miller, 2009). Additional research indicates a reason for the practice: it works. Carter and Sanna (2006) found that individuals who were able to assert a connection to a successful sports team gained favorability in the eyes of observers; however, in keeping with the principle of association, this effect reversed if observers didn’t view the successful team favorably. Tal-Or (2008) found that the basking-in-reflected-glory effect applied to a specific and desirable form of evaluation from others. Individuals who claimed a close association (“good friend”) to a successful basketball player were rated by observers as more successful themselves.
1.As another measure of the strength and ease of implementation of the “most popular dishes” tactic, the Beijing restaurant chain (Mei Zhou Dong Po) has since incorporated it into all its locations (Cai, Chen, & Fang, 2009). The impact of the London brewery’s bar sign was reported by advertising expert Richard Shotton, who designed the test (Shotton, 2018). Research on McFlurry choices was conducted by my InfluenceAtWork.com colleagues Steve J. Martin and Helen Mankin under the auspices of Dan Gertsacov, at the time the chief marketing officer of Arcos Dorados S.A., which owned the McDonald’s locations in Latin America. For additional details on this and other McDonald’s studies done by our team, go to www.influenceatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Persuasion-Pilots-McDonalds-Arcos-Dorados-INFLUENCE-AT-WORKpdf.pdf.
The lesson that popularity begets popularity also emerges from research into music-download choices. If, on a music site, a never-before-heard song was designated (at random by researchers) as popular, it became more popular (Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006). Results like these fit with evidence that people believe, correctly, that the crowd is typically right (Surowiecki, 2004). For an extensive exploration of the rise of popularity in today’s information environment, see Derek Thompson’s (2017) engaging book on the topic, which confirms the tongue-in-cheek observation we could make that “Popularity these days is all the rage.”
2.The experiment showing the effect of social-proof information on estimates of morality was conducted by Aramovich, Lytle, & Skitka (2012). See Barnett, Sanborn, & Shane (2005) for the research showing that perceptions of the frequency of crimes by others are related to possible perpetrators’ likelihood of performing the crimes themselves. Besides the bad news that when people perceive partner violence as frequent, they are more likely to engage in it (Mulla et al., 2019), there is the good news that when they get evidence that bad behavior is not the social norm, they refrain from it (Paluck, 2009). The data indicating that 98 percent of online shoppers prioritize authentic customer reviews most when making purchase decisions comes from a survey in Search Engine Journal (Nijjer, 2019). Marijn Stok and her associates (2014) did the research on Dutch teens’ fruit consumption. The city of Louisville’s success in getting parking-ticket holders to pay on time was reported by the Behavioral Insights Team on p. 29 of Behavioral Insights for Cities (www.bi.team/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Behavioral-Insights-for-Cities-2.pdf). The research into face-mask wearing in Japan was conducted by Nakayachi et al. (2020). For reviews of the effectiveness of social-proof interventions on various forms of pro-environmental action, see Andor & Fels (2018), Bergquist, Nilsson, & Schultz (2019), and Farrow, Grolleau, & Ibanez (2017). Countries using social proof to reduce corporate pollution are Indonesia (Garcia, Sterner, & Afsah, 2007) and India (Powers et al., 2011). Albert Bandura and his coworkers performed the work on how to reduce children’s fear of dogs via social proof in a pair of famous studies (Bandura, Grusec, & Menlove, 1967; Bandura & Menlove, 1968).
3.Perhaps because of the quality of ragged desperation with which they approached their task, the believers were wholly unsuccessful at enlarging their number. According to Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter (1964), not a single convert was gained. At that point, in the face of the dual failures of physical and social proof, the cult quickly disintegrated. Less than three weeks after the date of the predicted flood, group members were scattered and maintained only sporadic communication with one another. In one final—and ironic—disconfirmation of prediction, it was the movement that perished in the flood.
Ruin has not always been the fate of doomsday groups whose predictions proved unsound, however. When such groups have been able to build social proof for their beliefs through effective recruitment efforts, they have grown and prospered. For example, when the Dutch Anabaptists saw their prophesied year of destruction, 1533, pass uneventfully, they became rabid seekers after converts, pouring unprecedented amounts of energy into the cause. One extraordinarily eloquent missionary, Jakob van Kampen, is reported to have baptized one hundred persons in a single day. So powerful was the snowballing social evidence in support of the Anabaptist position that it rapidly overwhelmed the disconfirming physical evidence and turned two-thirds of the population of Holland’s great cities into adherents. More recent evidence supports the idea that when their central beliefs are undermined, people engage in efforts to persuade others to those beliefs as a way to restore their validity (Gal & Rucker, 2010).
4.The scientific literature is clear that attention to the actions of others is intensified under conditions of uncertainty because those actions serve to reduce the uncertainty (Sechrist & Stangor, 2007; Sharps & Robinson, 2017; Wooten & Reed, 1998; Zitek & Hebl, 2007). For the Sylvan Goldman story, see Dauten (2004) and www.wired.com/2009/06/dayintech-0604.
Besides a lack of familiarity with a particular situation, another kind of uncertainty occurs when we don’t have much confidence in our existing preferences on an issue. In that case, we are again especially influenced by social proof. Take as evidence the results of one more study done in Latin American McDonald’s restaurants by my InfluenceAtWork.com colleagues Steve J. Martin and Helen Mankin. Most McDonald’s customers don’t purchase a dessert with their order; hence, they don’t have confidence in their preferences toward the range of dessert selections there. Consequently, when given the social-proof information that a McFlurry was the favorite choice, their likely purchase of a McFlurry rose significantly. But most McDonald’s customers do have a lot of experience with the burgers there. With that confidence of what they preferred already in place, when told the favorite burger selection at the restaurant, this information did not affect their burger choices. For additional details on this and other McDonald’s studies done by our team, see www.influenceatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Persuasion-Pilots-McDonalds-Arcos-Dorados-INFLUENCE-AT-WORKpdf.pdf.
Finally, in one study, participants who were hooked up to brain-imaging equipment saw product reviews of consumer items available on Amazon. The participants with low levels of confidence in their own initial opinions of the products became especially likely to move in the direction of others’ reviews as they saw more and more of them. This greater influence was registered in a sector of the brain associated with perceived value—the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (De Martino et al., 2017).
5.The famous, and now infamous, account of the Genovese neighbors’ “apathy” was presented in detail first in a long, front-page New York Times article (Gansberg, 1964) and later in a book by the Times metropolitan editor A. M. Rosenthal (1964). Early work successfully challenging many of the central details of these accounts can be credited to Manning, Levine, & Collins (2007); see also Philpot et al. (2020). Evidence for the pluralistic-ignorance phenomenon was provided by Latané and Darley (1968), whereas evidence that it and bystander inaction are unlikely to occur when observers are confident that an emergency exists can be seen in Clark and Word (1972, 1974) as well as in Fischer et al. (2011). Shotland and Straw (1976) conducted the studies on what a woman should shout to get bystander assistance when in a physical confrontation with a man.
6.The New York City study on looking up in a crowd (Milgram, Bickman, & Berkowitz, 1969) was replicated by investigators who found a similar pattern nearly a half-century later and in a different place, Oxford, England (Gallup et al., 2012). See Fein, Goethals, & Kugler (2007) and Stewart et al., (2018) for the work on the contagious effects of audience reactions at US presidential debates.
7.Josef Adalian, “Please Chuckle Here,” New York Magazine, November 23, 2011, http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/laughtracks-2011-12/; “How Do Laugh Tracks Work?” www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suD4KbgTl4).
8.Researchers from the Alfresco Labs performed the shopping-mall study; see www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/behavioural-economics-used-herd-shoppers/1348142. Freling & Dacin (2010) collected the data showing the greater and greater effectiveness of ads reporting higher and higher percentages of others’ preference for the advertised brand. The fruit-fly research was done by Danchin et al. (2018). Doug Lansky (2002) reported his experience at the Royal Ascot Races in his newspaper travel column “Vagabond Roaming the World.” Charles MacKay’s account of the 1761 London earthquake panic appeared in his classic book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). For a detailed account of the consequences of the cascading white-van frenzy, see www.insider.com/suspicious-white-van-unfounded-facebook-stories-causing-mass-hysteria-2019-12.
Other evidence is available for the validation component of social proof. In one study, children six to eleven years old given information that the other kids in the study had chosen to eat a lot of carrots responded by eating more of their own carrots—because that information gave them confidence that eating carrots was a good choice (Sharps & Robinson, 2017). An online consumer-choice experiment showed a similar effect. Participants who learned that two-thirds of the bottles of a particular wine had already been sold were more willing to purchase that wine than if they learned that only one-third of the bottles had been sold. Why? Because they assigned greater quality to the wine if its sales were stronger (van Herpen, Pieters, & Zeelenberg, 2009).
9.The data on Italian residents’ willingness to recycle household waste was collected in the cities of Rome, Cagliari, Terni, and Macomer by Fornara et al. (2011). My colleagues and I collected our data on household energy conservation in San Marcos, California, where, in addition to the effects I have described, we learned something else we found noteworthy. Our study included two control groups—one set of residents who received a message urging them to save energy but providing no stated reason for it and a second set of residents who received no message at all. Those two control groups were not different from one another in the subsequent energy they used (Nolan et al., 2008). In other words, simply exhorting people to conserve had the same impact as nothing. People want reasons to act. The important question is, of course, Which reasons are particularly mobilizing? In our study, easily the most persuasive reason to conserve energy in the home was that most of one’s neighbors were doing so.
10.When people desire social approval, they are more likely to conform to the group mind on an issue; more perilously, they are also more likely to conform to the alcohol-consumption levels of the group (Cullum et al., 2013). Berns et al. (2005) collected the data showing greater conformity and greater psychological pain when people feel out of keeping with the opinions of other people (versus computers); see Ellemers & van Nunspeet (2020) for additional such evidence. For a description of cult “love bombing,” see Hassan (2000).
11.Several research teams have confirmed that worried students’ adjust better when informed that other students like them have overcome their similar concerns (Binning et al., 2020; Borman et al., 2019; Stephens et al., 2012; Wilson & Linville, 1985). The work on adolescent aggression was reviewed by Jung, Busching, & Krahé (2019). Boh & Wong (2015) did the study showing that coworkers use one another rather than managers to decide whether to share information. Studies demonstrating that physicians’ prescribing practices conform to peer norms were reported by Fox, Linder, & Doctor (2016), Linder et al. (2017), and Sacarny et al. (2018). Robert Frank’s review of the impact of peer behavior on environmental action is contained in his book, Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work (2020). For additional evidence of the impact of peer-suasion on pro-environmental action, see Nolan et al. (2021), Schultz (1999), and Wolske, Gillingham, & Schultz (2020). Finally, college students’ attitudes toward minority groups can be modified by information about their peers’ attitudes (Murrar, Campbell, & Brauer, 2020).
12.It was Aune & Basil (1994) who hypothesized correctly that donations would rise after having an on-campus charity requester say, “I’m a student here, too.” The studies showing the influence of same-age peers were done by Murray et al. (1984) within an antismoking program and Melamed et al. (1978) for dental anxieties. The success of Opower’s Home Energy Reports containing peer consumption comparisons has been documented by Allcott (2011), Allcott & Rogers (2014), and Ayres, Raseman, & Shih (2013); although Opower’s reports have been delivered by mail, they work just as well when delivered electronically (Henry, Ferraro, & Kontoleon, 2019). Because of a corporate buyout, Opower’s name has changed to Oracle Utilities/Opower.
13.Phillips’s sequence of investigations began with the Werther effect (Phillips, 1974, 1979)—the modern-day operation of which can be found in the study of the 13 Reasons Why Netflix web series (Bridge et al., 2019)—and continued with his examination of the impact of widely publicized suicide stories on plane and automobile fatalities (Phillips, 1980). The story of contagious train suicides in a California high school was recounted by Los Angeles Times reporter Maria La Ganga (2009). Sumner, Burke, & Kooti (2020) provide a review of the role of the media in the contagiousness of suicide. A description of the infectious nature of product-tampering episodes is presented by Toufexis (1993). Mass murders in the United States are becoming more deadly and frequent over time—the largest total number of such deaths in recorded history, 224, occurred in 2017, whereas the largest number of incidents in recorded history, 41, occurred in 2019 (Pane, 2019). Evidence for the contagiousness of mass murder has been amassed by Towers et al. (2015) and reported on by Goode & Carey (2015) and Carey (2016).
Good accounts of the Jonestown massacre are provided by journalist J. Oliver Conroy in a 2018 retrospective (www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/17/an-apocalyptic-cult-900-dead-remembering-the-jonestown-massacre-40-years-on) and by survivor Tim Reiterman in his 2008 book on the matter. The analysis of factors affecting brands’ market share was conducted by Bronnenberg, Dhar, & Dubé (2007), whose findings fit with research showing large personality and attitude differences between people who live in different regions (Rentfrow, 2010).
14.The research on eating-disorder, suicide-prevention, and alcohol-deterrence programs was conducted by Mann et al. (1997), Shaffer et al. (1991), and Donaldson et al. (1995), respectively. In more recent research on programs designed to reduce stereotyping, informing participants that stereotyping was regrettably prevalent led them to exhibit more stereotyping (Duguid & Thomas-Hunt, 2015). The study my team and I performed in the Petrified Forest National Park is described more fully in Cialdini (2003).
Unfortunately, after we reported the outcomes of our study to park administrators, they decided not to change the relevant aspects of their signage. This decision was based on evidence from a survey they subsequently performed in which park personnel questioned several visitors, who said that information indicating the theft problem at the park was sizable would not increase their likelihood of stealing wood but would decrease it. We were disappointed—but, truth be told, not surprised—that in their signage decision, park officials weighted visitors’ subjective responses to hypothetical questions more heavily than our experimentally based empirical evidence, as it confirms what appears to be a lack of understanding within the larger society of what constitutes confidence-worthy research results (Cialdini, 1997).
15.The tendency for people to expect a trend to continue has been documented by Hubbard (2015), Maglio & Polman (2016), Markman & Guenther (2007), and Maus, Goh, & Lisi (2020). Our research into the effects of a trend on water conservation also included a study with similar results on willingness to complete a survey without pay (Mortensen et al., 2017). In addition, researchers have demonstrated the positive impact of trends on other low-prevalence behaviors such as eating meatless meals (Sparkman & Walton, 2017), reducing sugar consumption (Sparkman & Walton, 2019), choosing reusable drinking cups in a cafeteria (Loschelder et al., 2019), and—among female high school and college students—intending to pursue STEM fields for future study (Cheng et al., 2020).
16.It is perhaps no accident that the events leading to the bank crash took place in Singapore (News, 1988), as research tells us that citizens of Far Eastern societies have a greater tendency to respond to social-proof information than do those from Western cultures (Bond & Smith, 1996). But any culture that values the group over the individual exhibits this greater susceptibility to information about peers’ choices. A few years ago, some of my colleagues and I showed how this tendency operated in Poland, a country whose population is moving toward Western values but still retains a more communal orientation than do average Americans. We asked college students in Poland and the United States whether they would be willing to participate in a marketing survey. For the American students, the best predictor of their decision was information about how often they, themselves, had agreed to marketing-survey requests in the past; this is in keeping with the primarily individualistic point of reference of most Americans. For the Polish students, however, the best predictor of their decisions was information about how often their friends had agreed to marketing-survey requests in the past; this is in keeping with the more collectivistic values of their nation (Cialdini et al., 1999). Of course, as the evidence from this chapter shows, social proof also works forcefully in predominantly individualistic cultures, such as the United States. For instance, the data showing the deadly influence of social proof on the decisions of airplane pilots came from American flights (Facci & Kasarda, 2004).
1.Additional reasons I think that “behavioral science is so hot now” are explicated in Cialdini (2018). The BIT charity study is described in The Behavioural Insights Team Update, 2013–2015 report, www.bi.team/publications/the-behavioural-insights-team-update-report-2013-2015. For a history of the unit and a description of much the early work of the BIT as written by one of its founders, see Halpern (2016). Although in the BIT charity study combining two principles of influence had the greatest effect on donations, it would be a mistake to assume that inserting more than one principle into a persuasive message will always increase its impact. Shoehorning multiple tactics into the same communication can alert recipients to a heavy-handed effort to persuade them, which can have the opposite effect (Friestad & Wright, 1995; Law & Braun, 2000; Shu & Carlson, 2014).
2.The basic experiment, as well as his other variations on it, are presented in Milgram’s highly readable Obedience to Authority (1974) as well as in Doliński & Grzyb’s excellent Social Psychology of Obedience toward Authority (2020). A variety of reviews of subsequent research on obedience since the Milgram work concluded that the levels of obedience he found in his procedure in the United States in the 1960s are remarkably similar to those of more recent time periods (Blass, 2004; Burger, 2009; Doliński et al., 2017; “Fake Torture TV ‘Game Show’ Reveals Willingness to Obey,” www.france24.com/en/20100317-fake-torture-tv-game-show-reveals-willingness-obey) and similar to those in other countries.
In this latter respect, Milgram first began his investigations in an attempt to understand how the German citizenry could have participated in the concentration-camp destruction of millions of innocents during the years of Nazi ascendancy. After testing his experimental procedures in the United States, he had planned to take them to Germany, a country whose populace he was sure would provide enough obedience for a full-blown scientific analysis of the concept. The first eye-opening experiment in New Haven, Connecticut, however, made it clear that he could save his money and stay close to home. “I found so much obedience,” he said, “I hardly saw the need of taking the experiment to Germany.” But Americans have no monopoly on the need to obey authority. When Milgram’s basic procedure was eventually repeated elsewhere (South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Australia, India, and Jordan), the results were on average similar (see Blass, 2012; and Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986, for reviews).
The decades-long Milgram saga has something of a detective-story ending. The journalist Gina Perry was able to get access to the archive at Yale University where Milgram’s papers are kept and where she discovered the procedures and findings of a study he never published. In it, each Teacher was instructed to deliver a shock to a Learner whom he thought was a friend or neighbor. Compliance with the experimenter’s orders was drastically different as a consequence. Compared to the 65 percent of subjects who typically obeyed the experimenter to the end in Milgram’s paradigm, only 15 percent did so under these circumstances. This outcome fits well with evidence we’ll see in chapter 8 that compared to strangers or mere acquaintances, people are massively more likely to take the side of individuals with whom they feel a sense of unity, such as friends, neighbors, or kin. In addition to Perry’s book-length account (2012), Rochat & Blass (2014) have authored an academic article describing Milgram’s “secreted study.”
3.The alarming statistics regarding the frequency and impact of medical errors come from analyses by Szabo (2007), Makary & Daniel (2016), and Wears & Sutcliffe (2020), respectively. Regrettably, the situation hasn’t improved since “To Err Is Human,” the first report on the magnitude of medical error in the United States by the Institute of Medicine over two decades ago. As the researcher Kathleen Sutcliffe (2019) points out, much of the problem is attributable not to how the human body works but, rather, to how human psychology works.
4.The research showing the physical “growth” of classroom lecturers, politicians, and task participants based on their perceived status was conducted by Wilson (1968), Higham & Carment (1992), Sorokowski (2010), and Duguid & Goncalo (2012). Additionally, politicians who are taller than their opponents typically receive more votes (McCann, 2001). For instance, since 1900, the US presidency has been won by the taller of the major-party candidates in nearly 90 percent of the elections. So, in people’s minds, status doesn’t just increase height; height increases status as well. Additional data collected in the Hofling et al. (1966) study of nurses suggest that nurses may not be conscious of the extent to which the title “doctor” sways their judgments and actions. A separate group of 33 nurses and student nurses was asked what they would have done in the experimental situation. Contrary to the actual findings, only two predicted they would have given the medication as ordered.
More complete treatments of how hackers use psychology to breach elaborate security protections are available. One benefits from the coauthorship of Keven Mitnick, the acknowledged king of security hackers (Sagarin & Mitnick, 2012). The other offers a thoroughgoing, book-length description (Hadnagy & Schulman, 2020).
5.The studies of the compliance-enhancing effects of an authoritative uniform were done by Bickman (1974) and Bushman (1988); in a related update, Smith, Chandler, & Schwarz (2020) found that people who receive poor service from a company’s employee are more likely to blame the organization rather than the employee if the employee was wearing a uniform while providing the service. The jaywalking study was done by Lefkowitz, Blake, & Mouton (1955); Doob & Gross (1968) performed the prestige-versus–economy car experiment. Nelissen & Meijers (2011) collected the data showing the positive impact of prestige clothing on survey participation, charity donations, and job-interview ratings, whereas Oh, Shafir, & Todorov (2020) conducted the research showing the practically instantaneous assignment of competence to wearers of higher-versus lower-quality clothing. These last authors commented on a troubling aspect of their results—individuals from poorer economic backgrounds who are unable to afford expensive clothing are put at definite, automatically occurring disadvantage in employment interviews.
6.Michel Strauss’s account comes from his book, Pictures, Passion, and Eye (2011). For a thoroughgoing treatment of the increasingly valued role of the expert in modern life, see Stehr & Grundmann (2011). The research on the “halo effect” of expertise in a therapist’s office is attributable to Devlin et al. (2009), whereas the large impact of a single Op-Ed piece by an expert on readers’ opinions was documented by Coppock, Ekins, & Kirby (2018), who showed this effect for both ordinary readers and professional “elites,” such as think-tank scholars, journalists, bankers, law professors, congressional staffers, and academics. The willingness to follow those who appear to know what they are doing starts young, showing itself in preschoolers (Keil, 2012) and infants (Poulin-Dubois, Brooker, & Polonia, 2011).
For confirmation that both expertise and trustworthiness lead to perceived credibility and dramatically greater influence, see Smith, De Houwer, & Nosek (2013). The effectiveness in legal contexts of the “be the one to disclose a weakness” tactic has been demonstrated repeatedly (e.g., Dolnik, Case, & Williams, 2003; Stanchi, 2008; Williams, Bourgeois, & Croyle, 1993); the same tactic has proved effective for corporations that revealed negative information about themselves (Fennis & Stroebe, 2014). The information that politicians can increase their trustworthiness as well as their vote-worthiness by seemingly arguing against self-interest was provided by Cavazza (2016) and Combs & Keller (2010); a related effect in the political arena is that politicians who frame a message in negative terms (“15% are unemployed”) versus positive terms (“85% are employed”) are more persuasive with it because they are viewed as more trustworthy (Koch & Peter, 2017). The advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (now DDB) was the first to produce hugely successful ads admitting to a weakness that was then countered by a strength, such as the “Ugly is only skin deep” and “It’s ugly but it gets you there” ads for the early Volkswagen Beetle, as well as the game-changing “We’re #2. We try harder” campaign for Avis Rent A Car. Since then, similarly worded promotions for products, such as Buckley’s cough syrup (“It Tastes Awful. And It Works”), have also been highly effective. Ward & Brenner (2006) confirmed that an acknowledge-a-negative strategy is effective only when the negative occurs first.
7.The team that successfully trained people to disregard ads featuring bogus experts—by recognizing their vulnerability to such experts and distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant expertise—was led by my colleague Brad Sagarin (Sagarin et al., 2002). The tendency to resonate with the appeals of experts who seem impartial and resist the appeals of experts who have something to gain from our compliance has been demonstrated around the world (Eagly, Wood, & Chaiken, 1978; McGuinnies & Ward, 1980; Van Overwalle & Heylighen, 2006) and in young children (Mills & Keil, 2005).
1.Research into the psychological primacy of loss as demonstrated in a university cafeteria (West, 1975), multiple countries (Cortijos-Bernabeu et al., 2020), multiple domains (Hobfoll, 2001; Sokol-Hessner & Rutledge, 2019; Thaler et al., 1997; Walker et al., 2018), managerial decisions (Shelley, 1994), professional golfers’ efforts (Pope & Schweitzer, 2011), college students’ emotions (Ketelaar, 1995), energy-provider preferences (Shotton, 2018), task performers’ cheating choices (Effron, Bryan, & Murnighan, 2015; Kern & Chung, 2009; Pettit et al., 2016), and individuals’ physical reactions (Sheng et al., 2020; see Yechiam & Hochman, 2012, for a review) demonstrates the widespread applicability of prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Evidence from a variety of contexts indicates that loss aversion is particularly strong when risk and/or uncertainty are great (De Dreu & McCusker, 1997; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Walker et al., 2018; Weller et al., 2007), including the health/medical context (Gerend & Maner, 2011; Meyerwitz & Chaiken, 1987; Rothman & Salovey, 1997; Rothman et al., 1999). When risk and uncertainty are low, however, a promotive (rather than protective) orientation becomes dominant, and people value gains over losses (Grant Halvorson & Higgins, 2013; Higgins, 2012; Higgins, Shah, & Friedman, 1997; Lee & Aaker, 2004). The influence of scarcity on the judgments of new car buyers and fair-price judges can be seen in the findings of Balancher, Liu, & Stock (2009) and Park, Lalwani, & Silvera (2020), respectively.
2.The results of several experiments show that consumers are strongly attracted to products and experiences that possess unique elements (Burger & Caldwell, 2011; Keinan & Kivetz, 2011; Reich, Kupor, & Smith, 2018). The evidence that after a scarce item has been restored to good supply, people lose attraction for it comes from Schwarz (1984). A related point—that a rare object we think we like for its inherent qualities may surprise us and lose its appeal once it loses its scarcity—is made persuasively in a Reader’s Report I received from a Minneapolis woman: “Although I am from the U.S., I always loved putting together jigsaw puzzles of London’s Big Ben. They were rare finds in the U.S. and exciting when I came across one. But, once eBay came along and I could search for these puzzles on eBay, I started to find a lot of them and buying each one. I lost interest in them after that. Your book helped me realize that the scarcity of the Big Ben puzzles was more of the reason I wanted them than my fascination with Big Ben. At that point, after 23 years of loving to put together Big Ben puzzles, I had no more desire to put together another one, once I could find many of them.”
3.For the research showing that people assign greater worth to entities that are difficult to obtain and that they are normally correct in this presumption, see Lynn (1989) and McKenzie & Chase (2010). So ingrained is the belief that what’s scarce is valuable that we have come to believe that if something is valuable, it must be scarce (Dai, Wertenbroch, & Brendel, 2008). Jack Brehm formulated reactance theory in the mid-1960s (J. W. Brehm, 1966), and subsequent work has provided considerable support for it (e.g., Burgoon et al., 2002; Bushman, 2006; Dillard, Kim, & Li, 2018; Koch & Peter, 2017; Koch & Zerback, 2013; Miller et al., 2006; Schumpe, Belanger, & Nisa, 2020; Zhang et al., 2011). The study revealing reactant tendencies toward physical barriers in two-year-old boys was performed by S. S. Brehm & Weintraub (1977). Two-year-old girls in their study did not show the same resistant response to the large barrier as did the boys. Another study suggested this to be the case not because girls don’t oppose attempts to limit their freedoms. Instead, it appears that they are primarily reactant to restrictions that come from other persons rather than from physical obstacles (S. S. Brehm, 1981). For both sexes, however, children come to see themselves as separate individuals at around eighteen to twenty-four months of age, when they first recognize their “cognitive self” (Southgate, 2020; Howe, 2003).
Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz (1972) performed the initial work identifying the Romeo and Juliet effect. The occurrence of the Romeo and Juliet effect should not be interpreted as a warning to parents to be always accepting of their teenagers’ romantic choices. New players at this delicate game are likely to err often and, consequently, would benefit from the direction of an adult with greater perspective and experience. In providing such direction, parents should recognize that teenagers, who see themselves as young adults, will not respond well to control attempts that are typical of parent–child relationships. Especially in the adult arena of mating, adult tools of influence (preference and persuasion) will be more effective than traditional forms of parental control (prohibitions and punishments). Although the experience of the Montague and Capulet families is an extreme example, heavy-handed restrictions on a young romantic alliance may well turn it clandestine, torrid, and sad.
The reach of reactance into supermarket shoppers’ petition-signing decisions was identified by Heilman (1976). Moore & Pierce (2016) collected the data indicating that officials were more likely to punish rule violators on their birthdays and especially when the birthday was made salient; among the researchers’ six studies of the phenomenon, one examined 134,000 drunk-driving arrests in Washington State and found that police officers penalized drivers more harshly on the offender’s birthday. The investigation of the effects of a ban on phosphate detergents was done by Michael Mazis and colleagues (Mazis, 1975; Mazis, Settle, & Leslie, 1973), whereas early research on banned information was done by a wider range of researchers (Ashmore, Ramchandra, & Jones, 1971; Lieberman & Arndt, 2000; Wicklund & Brehm, 1974; Worchel, 1992; Worchel & Arnold, 1973; Worchel, Arnold, & Baker, 1975; Zellinger et al., 1974). The study of the effects of commodity scarcity plus information exclusivity was done as a doctoral dissertation by Amram Knishinsky (1982); for ethical reasons, the information provided to the customers was always true—there was an impending foreign-beef shortage, and this news had indeed come to the company through its exclusive sources.
4.See research by Thomas Koch (Koch & Peter, 2017; Koch & Zerback, 2013) for evidence that the perceived intent to persuade generates reactance and the resultant reactance weakens message effectiveness. Nicolas Guéguen and his colleagues are responsible for developing and testing the “But you are free” technique (Guéguen et al., 2013; Guéguen & Pascual, 2000). The meta-analysis of forty-two experiments was performed by Carpenter (2013). More recently, Guéguen has constructed another reactance-based compliance tactic. Rather than reducing reactance against saying yes to a request via words such as “But, you are free to refuse,” he builds reactance against saying no with the words “You’ll probably refuse, but . . .” Adding “You will probably refuse but” to a request for donations to a children’s health-care organization increased the percentage of donors in one study from 25 percent to 39 percent (Guéguen, 2016).
5.Worchel, Lee, & Adewole (1975) are to be credited with the famous chocolate-chip-cookie study. For marketing-oriented descriptions of the New Coke, story see Benjamin (2015) and C. Klein (2020); for an academic account based on scarcity and reactance, see Ringold (1988).
The work identifying reimposed deprivation as an initiating factor in political revolutions can be found in Davies (1962, 1969) and Fleming (1997); Lance Morrow’s commentary (1991) on how the people of the Soviet Union staged a coup against a coup still stands up to the test of history. Studies demonstrating that the inconsistent granting of freedoms by parents leads to generally rebellious children were done by Lytton (1979) and O’Leary (1995). To avoid this last form of insurgency, parents needn’t be severe or unduly rigid rule-keepers. For example, a child who unavoidably misses lunch can be given a before-dinner snack because this would not violate the normal rule against such snacks and, consequently, would not establish a general freedom. The difficulty comes when the child is capriciously allowed a treat on some days but not on others and can see no good reason for the difference. It is this arbitrary approach that can build perceived freedoms and provoke insurrection.
6.Advertisers employ limited offers in their messages in either limited-number or limited-time form. By far, limited-time offers are the more frequent—in one study of 13,594 newspaper ads, nearly three times as often (Howard, Shu, & Kerin, 2007). Yet research indicates that if they had the choice, advertisers would be better off using limited-number offers, which are superior in outcome—because only limited-number arrangements include the (potentially crazy-making) factor of interpersonal competition (Aggarwal, Jun, & Huh, 2011; Häubl & Popkowski Leszczyc, 2019; Teuscher, 2005).
7.The idea that in situations with new romantic opportunities, individuals seek to differentiate themselves has been validated in studies of animals (Miller, 2000) and humans (Griskevicius, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006). In the latter research, when placed in a romantic state of mind, college students displayed significantly more creativity. The effect among humans is hardly restricted to college students. For example, each of Pablo Picasso’s highly generative artistic periods (Blue, Rose, Cubist, and Surrealist) reveals a constant. As Griskevicius and colleagues state, “Each new epoch blossoms with paintings of a new woman—not a sitter or model, but a lover—each of whom is touted to have served Picasso as an incandescent, albeit temporary, muse (Crespelle, 1969; MacGregor-Hastie, 1988).” The research on the ad for the San Francisco Museum of Art was also led by my colleague, Vladas Griskevicius (Griskevicius et al., 2009). The claim that, in matters of opinion, people like to be in the majority but, in matters of taste, they do not is supported by Spears, Ellemers, & Doosje (2009). See Chan, Berger, & Van Boven (2012) for a full description of the research showing how in-group members balance the desire to conform to group taste preferences with the desire to express their individuality. The best reporting of General Shinseki’s rationale for his decision to provide black berets to the great majority all US Army personnel, as well as of the problem it produced and his resolution of it come from the official US Military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, October 20, 2000.
8.Data documenting the emotional arousal and narrowed focus that accompanies limitations are compelling (Shah et al., 2015; Zhu & Ratner, 2015; Zhu, Yang, & Hsee, 2018). Usually marketing schemes that use deceptive restrictions of a product (via “manufactured scarcity”) are kept hidden (www.wired.com/2007/11/best-buy-lying; www.nbcnews.com/technolog/dont-blame-santa-xbox-playstation-supply-probably-wont-meet-demand-6C10765763), but Kellogg’s chose to publicize one such scheme as evidence of the value of their Rice Krispies Treats (www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKc0Gtt91Js).
1.For an instructive article on Amazon’s “Pay to Quit” program, see www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/why-amazon-pays-employees-5000-to-quit.html. Evidence of the ability of a commitment, once made, to drive subsequent responding has been found at the horse track (Knox & Inkster, 1968), in political elections (Regan & Kilduff, 1988), and within resource-conservation efforts (Abrahamse & Steg, 2013; Andor & Fels, 2018; Pallak, Cook, & Sullivan, 1980). General support for the existence of consistency pressures has been obtained in a wide variety of studies (Briñol, Petty, & Wheeler, 2006; Bruneau, Kteily, & Urbiola, 2020; Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, & Levy, 2015; Ku, 2008; Mather, Shafir, & Johnson, 2000; Meeker et al., 2014; Rusbult et al., 2000; Stone & Focella, 2011; Sweis et al., 2018).
2.Although he wasn’t the first prominent theorist to give the need for consistency a central place in human behavior, easily the most famous was Leon Fes tinger, whose cognitive dissonance theory (1957) begins with the assumption that we are uncomfortable with our inconsistencies and will take steps to reduce or remove them, even if it requires fooling ourselves to do so (see Aronson & Tavris [2020] for a modern application of this powerful formulation to the COVID-19 pandemic). Moriarty (1975) conducted the radio-theft experiment. Not only is inconsistency a negatively viewed trait in ourselves; we also dislike it in others (Barden, Rucker, & Petty, 2005; Heinrich & Borkenau, 1998; Wagner, Lutz, & Weitz, 2009; Weisbuch et al., 2010). There is good evidence that consistent responding can occur in automatic fashion (Fennis, Janssen, & Vohs, 2009) both to avoid the undesired conclusions that rational thought can bring (Woolley & Risen, 2018) and simply to avoid the rigors of thinking, which can, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said, be laborious (Ampel, Muraven, & McNay, 2018; Wilson et al., 2014). Besides those benefits of a mechanical tendency toward consistency, it’s also the case that the propensity to stay consistent with an initial interpretation or choice very often leads to accurate decisions (Qiu, Luu, & Stocker, 2020). Siegal (2018) offers a highly critical look at the history and business model of TM.
3.It is both remarkable and instructive that relatively minor verbal commitments can lead to much larger behavior changes in such arenas as auto sales (Rubinstein, 1985), charitable volunteering (Sherman, 1980), Election Day voting (Greenwald et al., 1987; Spangenberg & Greenwald, 2001), in-home purchases (Howard, 1990), self-presentation (Clifford & Jerit, 2016), health-care choices (Sprott et al., 2006), and sexual infidelity (Fincham, Lambert, & Beach, 2010).
4.Information about the psychological indoctrination programs of the Korean War is available in the reports of Drs. Edgar Schein (1956) and Henry Segal (1954). It is important to note that the widespread collaboration Schein and Segal documented was not always intentional. The American investigators defined collaboration as “any kind of behavior which helped the enemy,” and it thus included such diverse activities as signing peace petitions, running errands, making radio appeals, accepting special favors, making false confessions, informing on fellow prisoners, divulging military information, and more.
The “How are you doing today?” study conducted by Daniel Howard (1990) was one of three he reported that showed the same pattern. See Carducci et al. (1989) and Schwartz (1970) for studies demonstrating the “momentum of compliance” effect. The initial data documenting the foot-in-the-door technique were collected by Freedman & Fraser (1966), but a variety of subsequent studies have supported its effectiveness; Doliński (2016) provides a review. Burger and Caldwell (2003) show how even trivial commitments can lead to self-concept change.
5.The reason active, public, effortful, and freely chosen commitments change our self-images is that each element gives us information about what we must truly believe. If you perceive yourself committing to a particular position by taking action regarding it, you are likely to attribute to yourself a stronger personal belief in the position. The same would be true if you see yourself taking the position for all to see, in a way that requires a lot of effort on your part, because of an entirely voluntary choice. The consequent impact on your self-concept would likely lead to resilient and enduring shifts (Chugani, Irwin, & Redden, 2015; Gneezy et al., 2012; Kettle & Häubl, 2011; Sharot, Velasquez, & Dolan, 2010; Sharot et al., 2012; Schrift & Parker, 2014).
The idea that people use their own actions as a primary source for deciding who they are was first rigorously tested by Bem (1972) and has since received good confirmation (e.g., Burger & Caldwell, 2003; Doliński, 2000). Poza (2016) posted the article describing the advantages of registration forms that limited their first page to two or three fields of requested information. The evidence for greater compliance from actively made commitments comes from Cioffi & Garner (1996), as well as from other experiments (Allison & Messick, 1988; Fazio, Sherman, & Herr, 1982; Silver et al., 2020). The tendency of observers to believe that the author of a statement believes it unless there is strong evidence to the contrary appeared in research by Allison et al. (1993), Gawronski (2003), and Jones & Harris (1967). The effects of giving people a label to live up to in the context of charity requests, supermarket purchases, and international negotiations were described by Kraut (1973), Kristensson, Wästlund, & Söderlund (2017), and Kissinger (1982), respectively.
6.The claim that public commitments tend to be lasting commitments has been well supported (e.g., Dellande & Nyer, 2007; Lokhorst et al., 2013; Matthies, Klöckner, & Preißner, 2006; Nyer & Dellande, 2010). An interesting form of this support comes from work showing consumers to be more loyal to brands they use publicly versus privately (Khamitov, Wang, & Thomson, 2019). Evidence that we want both to be consistent within ourselves and to appear consistent to others has been provided by Schlenker, Dlugolecki, & Doherty (1994) and Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma (1971). The stubbornness that public commitments confer on initial choices that Deutsch & Gerard (1955) observed can be seen in the hung-jury findings of Kerr & MacCoun (1985).
One piece of research (Gollwitzer et al., 2009) stands in stark contrast to the conclusion we have drawn about public commitments by reporting data suggesting that making a goal commitment public actually reduces one’s likelihood of reaching the goal. After reviewing the extant literature, one set of researchers (H. J. Klein et al., 2020) expressed frustration that even though this contradictory data set has been the only one to find its pattern, it is the one receiving the most media coverage outside of academic circles—in blogs, popular books, and a TED talk seen by millions. How might we account for its atypical pattern? I believe that psychological reactance (see chapter 6) may have played a role. Recall that reactance theory asserts that people become less likely to undertake an action if (1) deciding whether to take the action represents an important freedom for them and (2) they experience external pressure to take the action. In the Gollwitzer et al. (2009) work, participants were first asked to specify how they would take steps to further their educational goals. Next, in order to make these steps public, some participants were required to submit them to an external evaluator, the experimenter, who judged the steps before allowing the participants to continue. Other participants, in the private condition, did not have to gain the experimenter’s approval before being allowed to continue; they simply submitted their planned steps without the constraints of the experimenter’s permission to continue. These procedures led participants to become less likely to take the specified steps toward their goal only if both (1) the goal was important to them and (2) they experienced the external barrier of having the steps permitted by the experimenter—exactly what reactance theory would predict.
7.The effortful-commitment data from Hangzhou were collected by Xu, Zhang, & Ling (2018). Additional research into the greater impact of difficultly made commitments has revealed that people who pay for goods and services by using more psychologically uncomfortable means of payment (cash or checks versus credit or debit cards) become more committed to the transaction and brand and thus more likely to make a repeat purchase (Shah et al., 2015).
Although Whiting, Kluckhohn, & Anthony reported on the initiation rites of South Africa’s Thonga in 1958, not much about their severity has changed in the decades since. In May of 2013, for example, the South African government had to call a temporary halt to the initiation ceremonies of various tribes, including the Thonga, after twenty-three young initiates died within a span of nine days (Makurdi, 2013). A similar conclusion could be drawn regarding school fraternity’s hazing ceremonies, which were first recorded in the United States at Harvard in 1657 and have remained present, intractable, and deadly ever since. For a manageably-sized summary, see Reilly (2017); but for a comprehensive and continually updated record of school hazings, go to the website of college professor Hank Nuwer (www.hanknuwer.com) and his multiple books on the topic, from which I gleaned most of my information. The research on the effects of arduousness—either in the form of embarrassment (Aronson & Mills 1959) or pain (Gerard & Mathewson, 1966)—on an entrant’s positive responses to an opportunity has been extended to a commercial context; consumers given access to an exclusive one-day-sale offer were more favorable to the deal if getting that access was made effortful rather than easy (Barone & Roy, 2010).
8.The idea that paying people to take a stand produces greater commitment to it if they are paid a small versus large amount for the commitment has received steady support since it was first predicted (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). For example, in a more recent experiment, participants who put themselves in the position of referring a friend to a brand became more favorable and loyal to the brand when the monetary reward for the referral was small (Kuester & Blankenstein, 2014). In a similar vein, since its early demonstrations (Cooper & Fazio, 1984; Deci et al., 1982; Zuckerman et al., 1978), the idea that giving people free choice produces greater commitment has also continued to receive support (e.g., Shi et al., 2020; Geers et al, 2013; Staats et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2011), including among infants (Silver et al., 2020). One reason voluntary choices strengthen commitments is that they activate our brains’ reward sectors (Leotti & Delgado, 2011). Evidence that commitments are undermined when they are made because of external pressures such as large monetary rewards or punishments can be seen in the work of Deci & Ryan (1985), Higgins et al. (1995), and Lepper & Greene (1978). Finally, when commitments are made for internal rather than external reasons, they lead to greater psychological well-being. Muslim women in Saudi Arabia and Iran who wear a veil have greater life-satisfaction scores if they do so for internal reasons, such as personal preferences or values, rather than for external reasons, such as government controls or social approval (Legate et al., 2020).
9.For examples of how people support their commitments with new justifying reasons, see Brockner & Rubin (1985) and Teger (1980). In addition to the Cialdini et al. (1978) study, several other experiments attest to the success of the low-ball procedure in a variety of circumstances and with both sexes (Brownstein & Katzev, 1985; Burger & Petty, 1981; Guéguen & Pascual, 2014), and Joule, 1987. Burger & Caputo (2015) report a meta-analysis confirming the tactic’s effectiveness, as do Pascual et al. (2016) who support a commitment-based explanation for it. A full description of the Iowa energy-users study is provided in Pallak, Cook, & Sullivan (1980).
10.The Grant & Hofmann (2011) study also evaluated the impact of two other signs placed over soap and gel dispensers, neither of which was designed to remind doctors of their commitment to patient safety (“Gel in, Wash Out” and “Hand hygiene protects you from catching diseases”) and neither of which had any effect on soap or gel usage. Meeker et al. (2014) conducted the study on prescription of antibiotics, whereas the work on reminders of prior pro-environmental commitments was performed by Cornelissen et al. (2008) and Van der Werff, Steg, & Keizer (2014).
11.It is not altogether unusual for even some of our most familiar quotations to be truncated by time in ways that greatly modify their character. For example, it is not money the Bible claims as the root of all evil; it’s the love of money. So as not to be guilty of the same sort of error myself, I should note that the Emerson quote is somewhat longer and substantially more textured than I have reported. In full, it reads, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
Evidence that we are sensitive to our feelings on a topic earlier than our cognitions regarding it comes from Murphy & Zajonc (1993) and van den Berg et al. (2006). This is not to say that what we feel about an issue is always different from or always to be trusted more than what we think about it. However, the data are clear that our emotions and beliefs often do not point in the same direction. Therefore, in situations involving a commitment likely to have generated supporting rationalizations, feelings may well provide the truer counsel. This would be especially so when, as in the question of Sara’s happiness, the issue at hand concerns an emotion (Wilson et al., 1989).
12.My team’s work on a preference for consistency scale and the relationship of age to the preference for consistency appears in Cialdini, Trost, & Newsom (1995) and Brown, Asher, & Cialdini (2005), respectively. The analysis of the tapes of scammers attempting to defraud the elderly is contained in Pratkanis and Shadel’s informative book Weapons of Fraud: A Sourcebook for Fraud Fighters (2005). There is good evidence of the tendency of US residents to be individualistic (Santos, Varnum, & Grossmann, 2017; Vandello & Cohen, 1999) and that this tendency inclines them toward consistency with their prior choices (Cialdini et al., 1999; Petrova, Cialdini, & Stills, 2007).
1.This chapter incorporates and updates some material from my book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade (2016), with permission of the publisher Simon & Schuster. Evidence for the multifaceted positive effects of in-group favoritism comes from Guadagno & Cialdini (2007) and Stallen, Smidts, & Sanfey (2013) for agreement; Foddy, Platow, & Yamagishi (2009) and Yuki et al. (2005) for trust; Cialdini et al., (1997), De Dreu, Dussel, & Ten Velden (2015), Gaesser, Shimura, & Cikara (2020), and Greenwald & Pettigrew (2014) for help and liking; Balliet, Wu, & De Dreu (2014) and Buchan et al. (2011) for cooperation; Westmaas & Silver (2006) for emotional support; Karremans & Aarts (2007) and Noor et al. (2008) for forgiveness; Adarves-Yorno, Haslam, & Postmes (2008) for judged creativity; Gino & Galinsky (2012) and Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto (2007) for judged morality; and Brandt & Reyna (2011), Haslam (2006), Smith (2020), and Markowitz & Slovic (2020) for judged humanness. Evidence that in-group favoritism appears in other primates and among human infants is available in Buttleman & Bohm (2014), Mahajan et al. (2011), and Over & McCall (2018).
2.The cognitive confusion that arises among the identities of in-group members can be seen in their tendencies to project their own traits onto those group members (Cadinu & Rothbart, 1996; DiDonato, Ulrich, & Krueger, 2011), to poorly remember whether they had previously rated traits belonging to themselves or fellow in-group members (Mashek, Aron, & Boncimino, 2003), and to take longer to identify differentiating traits between themselves and in-group members (Aron et al., 1991; Otten & Epstude, 2006; Smith, Coats, & Walling, 1999). The neuroscientific evidence for the blurring of self and close-other representations locates their common brain sectors and circuits in the prefrontal cortex (Ames et al., 2008; Kang, Hirsh, & Chasteen, 2010; Cikara & van Bavel, 2014; Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005; and Volz, Kessler, & von Cramon, 2009). Pfaff (2007, 2015) introduced the concept of neuronal “cross-excitation.”
Other kinds of cognitive confusions also seem to be due to the brain’s use of the same structures and mechanisms for distinct undertakings (Anderson, 2014). For example, the tendency of individuals who repeatedly imagine doing something then coming to believe that they have actually done it can be partially explained by research showing that performing an action and imagining performing it involve some of the same brain components (Jabbi, Bastiaansen, & Keysers, 2008; Oosterhof, Tipper, & Downing, 2012). In another illustration, the hurt of social rejection is experienced in the same brain regions as physical pain, which allows Tylenol to reduce the discomfort of both (DeWall et al., 2010).
3.Shayo (2020) provides a thoroughgoing presentation of the evidence that shared identities within in-groups are consistently linked to favorability toward and conformity with fellow members. The study showing team members’ outsized favorability toward the robots on their team was done by Fraune (2020). Clark et al. (2019) offer strong support for their claim that “Tribalism is human nature,” as does Greene (2014); and, along with Greene, Tomasello (2020) argues that human groups have sought to fortify such tribalism by making it a moral duty.
4.Not surprisingly, supporters of Joe Girard have challenged Ali Reda’s claim to superior sales production. However, Mr. Reda’s sales manager, who has access to dealership records, stands by the claims. Informative articles on the similarities and differences between Girard and Reda can be found at www.autonews.com/article/20180225/RETAIL/180229862/who-s-the-world-s-best-car-salesman and www.foxnews.com/auto/the-worlds-best-car-salesman-broke-a-44-year-old-record-and-someones-not-too-pleased. Scientific research confirms the favorable impact of shared “we”-ness on sales outcomes: prospects were significantly more willing to accept a sales appeal to join a personal-training program if they and their future trainer had been born in the same community. Similarly, a sales appeal for a package of dental services was more successful if prospects learned that they had the same birthplace as the dentist they would see (Jiang et al., 2010).
5.Dimmock, Gerken, & Graham (2018) did the work demonstrating that financial advisors became more likely to commit financial misconduct if, in their offices, they had contact with a fellow advisor of the same ethnicity who had done so. The study of auditors’ financial misstatements was done by Du (2019). Fisman, Paravisini, & Vig (2017) analyzed the effects of Indian loan office-applicant religious similarities on loan approvals, terms, and repayments. Customers’ greater willingness to forgive a service error if they shared the service provider’s last name was observed by Wan & Wyer (2019). In the Polish study using “lost” letters (Dolińska, Jarząbek, & Doliński, 2020), the letters were dropped around a mid-sized city at one hundred sites, including bus stops, shopping malls, cash machines, and sidewalks that were at least 250 meters from the nearest visible mailbox. Kristin Michelitch (2015) performed the taxi fare–bargaining study in locations around a centrally located market in the city of Accra.
6.The report summarizing the science of “blue” lies (Smith, 2017) appeared in Scientific American Online: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-the-science-of-blue-lies-may-explain-trumps-support; in a similar finding, people were willing to follow the norms of a group, even when they knew the norms to be unconnected to reality, provided they felt a strong shared identity with the group (Pryor, Perfors, & Howe, 2019). The research showing that highly identified political-party members are willing to hide the tax fraud of a fellow member (Ashokkumar, Galaif, & Swann, 2019), delude themselves regarding their party’s superior contributions to community welfare (Blanco, Gómez-Fortes, & Matute, 2018), prioritize the medical treatment of same-party individuals (Furn ham, 1966), and accept the judgments of poorly skilled same-party followers (Marks et al., 2019) fits with emerging scholarship indicating that political-party adherents base many of their political decisions less on ideology than on loyalties to such identity-defining parties and their members (Achen & Bartels, 2017; Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012; Jenke & Huettel, 2020; Kalmoe, 2019; Schmitt et al., 2019). This view of mornality as based in in-group loyalties has become a central feature of modern political persuasion efforts (Buttrick, Molder, & Oishi, 2020). Ellemers & van Nunspeet (2020) provide an instructive summary of the neuropsychological mechanisms through which such in-group biases emerge.
Political parties are hardly the only “we”-based frameworks in which members are willing to conceal the wrongdoings of their partners. When questioned, people (1) expressed a strong bias against reporting to police the harmful action of a close other, such as a good friend or family member; (2) were particularly unwilling to make such a report when the harmful action was severe versus minor (e.g., burglary or physical sexual harassment versus illegal music downloading or staring-based sexual harassment); and (3) admitted the reason for this reluctance was to protect their own reputations (Weidman et al., 2020; see also Hildreth & Anderson, 2018, and Waytz, Dungan, & Young, 2013). Once again, we see that the “we” implicates the “me.”
7.Biased calls by international football (soccer), Major League Baseball, and National Basketball Association officiators were uncovered in research by, in turn, Pope & Pope (2015), Parsons et al. (2011), and Price & Wolfers (2010). The Asimov (1975) quote appeared in a TV Guide magazine article, in which he commented on the over-the-top bias of each US state for its candidate in the Miss America pageant of that year.
8.For research documenting declines in the health of romantic partners if ongoing problems are not resolved, see Shrout et al. (2019). Women’s health complications stemmed mainly from the amount of time that relationship disagreements remained unresolved; whereas, for men, it was the sheer number of unsettled disagreements. For both sexes, the impact on health could be seen for as long as sixteen years. The partnership-raising study, one of my all-time favorites, was done by Oriña, Wood, & Simpson (2002). For a full examination of the grounds for my assertion that “the thing most likely to guide a person’s behavioral decisions . . . is the one most prominent in consciousness at the time of decision,” see Cialdini (2016).
9.The study showing the link between friends’ levels of physical activity (Priebe & Spink, 2011) also found that participants underestimated their friends’ influence on their activity production, mistakenly assigning greater influence to factors associated with health and personal appearance. Bond et al. (2012) conducted the Facebook voter-mobilization study. The study of best friends’ potent impact on college student’s drinking demonstrated this effect for both White students and Native American students (Hagler et al., 2017). In general, friends see and actually possess higher levels of genetic overlap with one another than with nonfriends (Cunningham, 1986; Christakis & Fowler, 2014; Daly, Salmon, & Wilson, 1997).
10.Norscia & Palagi (2011) collected the data revealing the proportional relationship between human contagious yawning and the degree of personal connection between the yawners; they found the same relationship when the yawns were transmitted only acoustically (Norscia et al., 2020). Demonstrations of contagious yawning intensified by social bonds in chimpanzees, baboons, bonobos, and wolves are provided by Campbell & de Waal (2011), Palagi et al. (2009), Demuru & Palagi (2012), and Romero et al. (2014), respectively. Romero, Konno, & Hasegawa (2013) performed the experiment on cross-species contagious yawning.
Cat lovers, don’t despair. That I haven’t provided data showing contagious yawning between feline pets and their owners may not mean the effect doesn’t exist. The lack of evidence might just come from the fact that researchers haven’t yet tested the possibility—probably because it’s difficult to get cats to stay still and focused long enough. Nonetheless, anyone who really wants to believe can take heart from this article: https://docandphoebe.com/blogs/the-catvocate-blog/why-do-animals-yawn.
11.Aside from business, politics, sports, and personal relationships, other important domains of human interaction show prejudicial effects of “we”-group identity, with equally striking levels of bias. In health, infant mortality at birth drops significantly when the attending physician is of the same race as that of the newborn (Greenwood et al., 2020). Within law enforcement, traffic stops by Boston police were less likely to result in a search of the driver’s vehicle if the officer and the driver were of similar race (Antonovics & Knight, 2009). In Israeli small-claims courts, Arab and Israeli judges’ decisions robustly favored members of their own ethnic group (Shayo & Zussman, 2011). Within education, teachers’ grading practices show comparable effects: a teacher–student match on race, religion, gender, ethnicity, or nationality increases student class evaluations and examination grades (Dee, 2005). Particularly plain evidence of the favoritism comes from a study at a Dutch university (Maastricht) located near the border with Germany, which possesses large populations of students and teachers from both the Netherlands and Germany. When students’ examination papers were randomly assigned to be graded by teachers with similar or dissimilar nationalities, higher scores were assigned to students with names that matched the grader’s nationality (Feld, Salamanca, & Hamermesh, 2015).
12.The mainstay of evolutionary thinking—that individuals do not so much attempt to ensure their own survival as the survival of copies of their genes—flows from the concept of “inclusive fitness,” initially specified by W. D. Hamilton (1964), which has continued to receive support against multiple challengers (Kay, Keller, & Lehmann, 2020). Evidence for the particularly strong pull of kinship in life-or-death situations is available in Borgida, Conner, & Mamteufal (1992), Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994), and Chagnon & Bugos (1979). Furthermore, the closer the relative is in terms of genetic overlap (e.g., parent or sibling versus uncle or cousin), the greater the feelings of self–other overlap (Tan et al., 2015). Telzer et al. (2010) obtained the finding that teenagers experience brain-system rewards after helping family. Reviews of the impressively wrought “fictive families” research can be found in Swann & Buhrmester (2015) and Fredman et al. (2015); additional research offers an explanation for these group-advancing effects: making a group identity prominent in consciousness causes individuals to focus their attention intently on information that fits with that identity (Coleman & Williams, 2015), which causes them, in turn, to see that information as more important. A study by Elliot & Thrash (2004) showed that the almost-total amount of parents’ support of their kids in my class was no fluke. These researchers offered a point of extra credit in a psychology class to students whose parents answered a questionnaire with forty-seven items; 96 percent of the questionnaires were returned completed. Joel Stein’s “Mama Ann” column can be read it its entirety at http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1830395,00.html. Preston (2013) provides a detailed analysis of offspring nurturance as the basis for much wider forms of helping.
Although biologists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists know it from their studies, one doesn’t have to be a scientist to recognize the enormous pull that offspring have on their parents. For example, novelists have frequently depicted the strong emotional force of the pull. A story is told of a bet made by the novelist Ernest Hemingway, who was renowned for the emotive power his prose was able to create despite its spareness. While drinking in a bar with one of his editors, Hemingway wagered that in just six words, he could write an entire dramatic story that anyone would understand completely and experience deeply. If, after reading the story, the editor agreed, he would buy drinks for the house; if not, Hemingway would pay. With the terms set, Hemingway wrote the six words on the back of a drink napkin and showed them to the man, who then quietly rose, went to the bar, and bought a round of drinks for all present. The words were “For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.”
13.A copy of Buffett’s fiftieth-anniversary letter is available online at www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2014ltr.pdf as part of Berkshire Hathaway’s 2014 Annual Report, which appeared in February of 2015. For an instructive treatment of how the messenger can become the message, see Martin and Marks’s (2019) highly readable book on the topic. Both inside and outside family boundaries, people use similarities to judge genetic overlap and to favor those high on the dimension (DeBruine, 2002, 2004; Hehman, Flake, & Freeman, 2018; Kaminski et al., 2010). Data supporting the phenomena of family members being more helpful toward and feeling more close to those who resemble them come from research by Leek & Smith (1989, 1991) and Heijkoop, Dubas, & van Aken (2009), respectively. The evidence that manipulated physical similarity influences votes was collected by Bailenson et al. (2008).
14.People use attitudinal similarities as a basis for assessing genetic relatedness and, consequently, as a basis for forming in-groups, which in turn affects their decisions about whom to help (Grey et al., 2014; Park & Schaller, 2005). That political and religious attitudes are most likely to be passed on through heredity and, therefore, to reflect the genetic “we” is well documented (Bouchard et al., 2003; Chambers, Schlenker, & Collisson, 2013; Hatemi & McDermott, 2012; Hufer et al., 2020; Kandler, Bleidorn, & Riemann, 2012; Lewis & Bates, 2010). These types of attitudes are also highly resistant to change (Bourgeois, 2002; Tesser, 1993).
15.A good review of the cues humans (and nonhumans) use to identify kinship was done by Park, Schaller, & Van Vugt (2008); one of those cues is commonality of residence (Lieberman & Smith, 2012). Strong evidence for the impact of coresidence and parents’ observed care on their children’s subsequent altruism can be found in Cosmides & Tooby (2013) and Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmides (2007). As regards Chiune Sugihara, it is always risky to generalize from a single case to a broader conclusion, even one bolstered by Mother Teresa’s account of her home environment. In this instance, however, we know he was not the only notable rescuer of the era whose early home life incorporated human diversity. Oliner & Oliner (1988) found such a history in a sizable sample of European Gentiles who harbored Jews from the Nazis. And as would be expected, while growing up, rescuers in Oliner & Oliner’s sample felt a sense of commonality with a more varied group of people than did an otherwise comparable sample of nonrescuers at the time. Not only was this expanded sense of “we”-ness related to their subsequent decisions to aid people different from themselves during the Holocaust; when interviewed a half-century later, rescuers were still helping a greater variety of people and causes (Midlarsky & Nemeroff, 1995; Oliner & Oliner, 1988).
More recently, researchers have developed a personality scale assessing the degree to which an individual spontaneously identifies with all humanity. This important scale, which includes measures of the frequency of use of the pronoun we, the conception of others as family, and the perceived extent of self–other overlap with people in general, predicts willingness to help the needy in other countries by contributing to international humanitarian relief efforts (McFarland, Webb, & Brown, 2012; McFarland, 2017). Information on the situational and personal factors leading to Sugihara’s helping action in the pre–World War II environment comes from histories of the circumstances in Japan and Europe at the time (Kranzler, 1976; Levine, 1997; Tokayer & Swartz, 1979) and from interviews with Sugihara (Craig, 1985; Watanabe, 1994).
16.Cohen’s (1972) description of the concentration-camp incident came from a conversation with a former Nazi guard there who, in a bizarre association, was Cohen’s roommate at the time he relayed the story. It’s estimated that the people of Le Chambon, led by André Trocmé and his wife, Magda, saved the lives of 3,500 people. As to the question of why he decided to help the first of those individuals—a Jewish woman he found freezing outside his home in December of 1940—it is difficult to answer with certainty. But when in custody near the end of the war and Vichy officials demanded the names of Jews he and his fellow residents had assisted, his response could easily have come straight from the mouth (but, more fundamentally, the heart and worldview) of Chiune Sugihara: “We do not know what a Jew is. We only know human beings” (Trocmé, 2007/1971). As regards the question of whether his relatives or neighbors were the more likely to accede to Trocmé’s requests, evidence from other sources indicates that it would have been the former—individuals for whom certainty of kinship would be stronger (Curry, Roberts, & Dunbar, 2013; Rachlin & Jones, 2008). For example, when, during the Rwandan genocide of the mid-1990s, attacks against Tutsis by Hutus included neighbors, those agitating for the attacks did so on the basis of tribal membership; “Hutu Power” was both a rallying cry and a justification for the slaughter.
The statistical analysis of the effectiveness of the Obama local-field-office plan was performed by Masket (2009). For an overview of how Obama strategists employed other insights from behavioral science throughout the campaign, see Issenberg (2012). The finding that people are especially susceptible to local voices (e.g., Agerström et al., 2016) has been termed “the local dominance effect” (Zell & Alike, 2010) that, when translated into electoral politics, means citizens are more likely to comply with the voter-turnout requests of members of their own communities (Nickerson & Feller, 2008). By the way, this last recognition didn’t emerge from an arm’s-length reading of the behavioral-science literature; David Nickerson was embedded as a behavioral-science advisor within the Obama campaign.
Have you ever noticed how certain commercial organizations refer to their customers, subscribers, or followers as members of the “XYZ community?” I think it’s for the same reason other such organizations cite membership in the “ZYX family” Each designation recruits a powerful, primordial sense of “we”-ness.
17.The evidence of willingness to answer a survey, follow the recommendation of an Amazon product reviewer, overestimate one’s home state’s role in history, oppose the war in Afghanistan, and desert one’s military unit comes from Edwards, Dillman, & Smyth (2014), Forman, Ghose, & Wiesenfeld (2008), Putnam et al. (2018), Kriner & Shen (2012), and Costa & Kahn (2008), respectively. According to Levine (1997), Sugihara’s visas salvaged the lives of up to ten thousand Jews, the majority of whom found asylum in Japanese territory. The events attendant to the Japanese decision to shelter them have been described by several historians (e.g., Kranzler, 1976, and Ross, 1994); but the most detailed account is provided by Marvin Tokayer, the former chief rabbi of Tokyo (Tokayer & Swartz, 1979). My own account is modified from a more academic version that appeared in a coauthored textbook (Kenrick et al., 2020).
Observant readers may have noticed that when describing the murderous policies of the Holocaust, I referred to them as Nazi, not German. That is the case because of my view that it is not accurate or fair to equate the Nazi regime in Germany with the culture or people of that country, as is sometimes done. After all, we don’t equate the culture and people of Cambodia or Russia or China or Iberia or the United States with the brutal programs of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, Stalin after World War II, the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution, the conquistadores after Columbus, or the Manifest Destiny enactors of adolescent America (the list could go on). Government regimes, which often arise from temporary and powerful situational circumstances, do not fairly characterize a people. Hence, I don’t conflate the two in discussing the time of Nazi ascendency in Germany.
18.For a review of the various types of behavioral-science data supporting the role of response synchrony on feelings of unitization, including self–other identity confusion (e.g., Milward & Carpenter, 2018; Palidino et al., 2010), see Wheatley et al. (2012). The tendency to coordinate movements in time with rhythmic sounds appeared in our evolutionary past even earlier than the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras; chimps sway together in response to acoustic beats, something that suggests the presence of the response in a common ancestor of approximately six million years ago (Hattori & Tomonaga, 2020). One researcher described the groupings resulting from coordinated movement among humans as temporary “neighborhoods,” in which members exert high levels of influence over one another’s direction (Warren, 2018). The case for societal mechanisms designed to foster collective solidarity is made particularly convincingly by Kesebir (2012) and Paez et al. (2015). Demonstrations of the effects of acting together on “we”-ness, as well as on video-game performance and brain-wave patterns, were provided by Koudenburg et al. (2015), von Zimmermann & Richardson (2016), and Dikker et al. (2017), respectively. Consistent with the idea that aspiring influencers might be able to benefit greatly from the unitizing effect of synchrony, consider the sweeping summary statement of renowned world historian William H. McNeill (1995, p. 152): “Moving rhythmically while giving voice together is the surest, most speedy, and efficacious way of creating and sustaining [meaningful] communities that our species has ever hit upon.”
19.Studies of the homogenizing effects of coordinated movement via finger tapping, smiling, and body shifting were conducted by Hove & Risen (2009), Cappella (1997), and Bernieri (1988), respectively. The water-sipping experiment was done by Inzlicht, Gutsell, & Legault (2012), who also included a third procedure in the study, in which subjects were required to imitate the water-sipping actions of in-group (White) actors. That procedure produced the typical prejudice for Whites over Blacks to a somewhat exaggerated degree.
Interestingly, there is one form of synchronous activity that has an additional benefit: when directing attention to a piece of information, people do so with increased intensity (i.e., allot it greater cognitive resources) if they see that they are attending to it simultaneously with someone else. However, this will only be the case if they have a “we” relationship with the other person. It seems that the act of paying conjoint attention to something along with a closely related other is a signal that the thing warrants special focus (Shteynberg, 2015).
20.My statement that the gold standard of social influence is “supportive conduct” is not meant to dismiss the importance of altering another’s feelings (or beliefs or perceptions or attitudes) within the influence process. At the same time, it does seem to me that efforts to create change in these factors are almost always undertaken in the service of creating change in supportive conduct. The tapping study was performed by Valdesolo & DeSteno (2011), whereas the marching research was done by Wiltermuth & Heath (2009). Marching in unison is an interesting practice in that it is still employed in military training, even though its worth as a battlefield tactic disappeared long ago. In a pair of experiments, Wiltermuth provides one compelling reason. After marching together, marchers became more willing to comply with a fellow marcher’s request to harm members of an out-group; and this was the case not only when the requester was an authority figure (Wiltermuth, 2012a) but also when the requester was a peer (Wiltermuth, 2012b).
21.As evidence for the idea grows, there is increasing acceptance of the conception of music as a socially unitizing mechanism that creates group solidarity and comes about via self–other merger (Bannan, 2012; Dunbar, 2012; Harvey, 2018; Loersch & Arbuckle, 2013; Oesch, 2019; Savage et al., 2020; Tarr, Launay, & Dunbar, 2014). Scholars aren’t alone in recognizing the unitizing function of music, sometimes to comedic extents; it would be hard not to laugh at this one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=etEQz7NYSLg. The study of helping among four-year-olds was done by Kirschner & Tomasello (2010); conceptually similar results were obtained by Cirelli, Einarson, & Trainor (2014) among much younger children: fourteen-month-old infants. A study of adults offers an explanation for the helpfulness. Singing together leads to feelings of self-other merger with fellow singers (Bullack et al.,2020).
22.Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) is the source for the most complete exposition of System 1 and System 2 thinking. Evidence for the validity of the distinction between the two systems is available there but also in less-fully-presented form from Epstein et al. (1992, 1999). The “I think” versus “I feel” evidence can be found in Clarkson, Tormala, & Rucker (2011) and Mayer & Tormala (2010). But, in general, the wisdom of having a good match between the emotional-versus-rational basis of an attitude and a persuasive argument can also be seen in Drolet & Aaker (2002) and Sinaceur, Heath, & Cole (2005).
23.Bonneville-Roussy et al. (2013) review and contribute data showing that young women view music as more important to them than clothing, films, books, magazines, computer games, TV, and sports—but not romance. There’s solid scientific evidence that music and rhythm operate independently of rational processes (e.g., de la Rosa et al., 2012; Gold et al., 2013). The Elvis Costello quote comes from an interesting article by Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis (2010), who added her own piece of evidence to the mix by showing that giving audience members prior structural information about musical pieces (excerpts from Beethoven string quartets) then reduced their enjoyment of experiencing them.
The study of popular song content over a recent span of forty years, found that 80 percent featured romantic and/or sexual themes (Madanika & Bartholomew, 2014). The French guitar-case experiment (Guéguen, Meineri, & Fischer-Lokou, 2014) recorded the following percentages of successful phone-number requests: guitar case = 31 percent, sports bag = 9 percent, nothing = 14 percent. Armstrong’s description of the effects of music on advertising success is presented on pp. 271–72 of his 2010 book.
24.The Mandy Len Catron New York Times piece can be retrieved at www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html, along with a link to the thirty-six questions. The interview with Elaine Aron is available at www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-aron-phd/36-questions-for-intimacy_b_6472282.html. The scientific article that served as the basis for the Catron essay is Aron et al. (1997). Evidence for the functional importance of the reciprocal, turn-taking feature of the thirty-six-questions procedure is provided by Sprecher et al. (2013). The procedure has been used in modified form to reduce prejudice between ethnic groups, even among individuals with highly prejudiced initial attitudes (Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton, & Tropp, 2008).
25.Probably the most informed retelling of the Ernst Hess saga is that of historian Susanne Mauss (Mauss, 2012), who discovered Himmler’s “letter of protection” in official Gestapo files and has verified it through other documents. There is some debate among scholars as to whether Hitler personally instructed Himmler to construct and send the letter or whether that was done by Hitler’s personal adjutant, Fritz Wiedemann, on Hitler’s behalf. Although Hess’s untouchable status lasted only a year (he was then placed in several forced-labor stations during the war, including a work camp, a construction company, and a plumbing firm), he was never sent to a death camp as were other members of his family, such as his sister who was gassed at Auschwitz. After the war, he became a railroad executive, eventually rising to the presidency of the German Federal Railways Authority in Frankfurt, where he died in 1983.
The researchers who analyzed the effects of shared suffering on fused in-group identity after the Boston Marathon bombings performed a similar analysis on the effects of the prolonged conflict between Northern Irish Unionists and Republicans and obtained similar results (Jong et al., 2015). The work showing the impact of submerging one’s hands in ice water also demonstrated its effects when using other kinds of pain-producing procedures such as eating a hot chili pepper and doing repeated leg squats together with group members (Bastian, Jetten, & Ferris, 2014). For additional research detailing the role of shared adversity in bringing about fused identities and subsequent supportive and self-sacrificial conduct, see Drury (2018) and Whitehouse et al. (2017). For reviews indicating that the concept of collective emotion is different in nature from that of individual emotion, see Goldenberg et al. (2020) and Parkinson (2020).
More detail on the saga of Irish–Native American unity is available in various news accounts (see, e.g., www.irishpost.com/news/irish-donate-native-american-tribes-hit-covid-19-repay-173-year-old-favour-184706; and https://nowthisnews.com/news/irish-repay-a-173-year-old-debt-to-native-community-hard-hit-by-covid-19) and in an episode of the highly informative podcast The Irish Passport (www.theirishpassport.com/podcast/irish-and-native-american-solidarity). The extent of the wretchedness of the Trail of Tears ordeal is revealed in a little publicized fact. Its original label, gleaned from a portrayal by a Choctaw chieftain, was “Trail of tears and death” (Faiman-Silva, 1997, p. 19).
26.Aldo Leopold’s manifesto, A Sand County Almanac, which was first published in 1949 and has since become a must-read primer for many wilderness groups, is the source of my treatment of his birch-versus-pine musings (see pp. 68–70 of the 1989 paperback edition). His strong belief that wilderness management is best accomplished through an ecology-centric rather than a human-centric approach is illustrated in his arguments against government predator-control policies in natural environments. Stunning evidence supports his position in the case of predator wolves. A visual presentation of that evidence is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q; you’ll be glad you watched it.
27.The IKEA-effect research was performed by Norton, Mochon, & Ariely (2012). The study of the evaluations of one’s coworkers and cocreated products was conducted in collaboration with Jeffrey Pfeffer (Pfeffer & Cialdini, 1998)—one of the most impressive academic minds I know. The effects of collaboration on three-year-olds’ sharing were demonstrated by Warneken et al. (2011). The positive results of cooperative-learning techniques are summarized in Paluck & Green (2009) and in Roseth, Johnson, & Johnson (2008); educators looking for information on how to implement one such approach (“The Jigsaw Classroom” as developed by Elliot Aronson and his associates) can find that information at www.jigsaw.org.
The survey study of the effects of asking for consumers’ advice on subsequent consumer engagement was published by Liu & Gal (2011), who found, instructively, that paying consumers an unexpectedly high amount for their advice eliminated any increased favoritism toward the brand; although the researchers didn’t investigate why this was the case, they speculated that the unexpected payment focused the participants away from the communal aspect of giving their advice and toward an individuating aspect of it—in this instance, their own economic outcomes associated with a financial exchange. For some examples of how various brands are employing cocreation practices to enhance customer engagement, see www.visioncritical.com/5-examples-how-brands-are-using-co-creation, and a pair of links within: www.visioncritical.com/cocreation-101 and www.greenbookblog.org/2013/10/01/co-creation-3-0. There’s a good reason brands use techniques such as cocreation to bond consumers’ identities with their brand. Consumers who have a strong feeling of shared identity with a brand (e.g., Apple) are more likely to ignore information about that brand’s product failures in determining their attitudes and loyalties toward the brand (Lin & Sung, 2014).
28.The question of how kinship is determined by members of various species has been the subject of myriad scientific investigations (e.g., Holmes, 2004; Holmes & Sherman, 1983; Mateo, 2003). Although fewer in number, investigations of how humans go about the process have been particularly informative for our purposes (Gyuris et al., 2020; Mateo, 2015). For instance, Wells (1987) reported that the concept of “honorary kin”—unrelated individuals who are present in the home and who acquire family-like titles as a result—exists in all human cultures. Most instructively, see the landmark analysis of kin detection among humans by Lieberman and her associates (Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2007; Sznycer et al., 2016), as well as its brief summary in Cosmides & Tooby (2013, pp. 219–22). My recommendation for parents to treat out-group visitors to the home as family rather than guests gains support from research showing that children pick up and follow adults’ nonverbal signals toward social group members (Skinner, Olson, & Meltzoff, 2020).
29.Nai et al. (2018) collected the data showing the positive effects of living in a diverse neighborhood on benevolence toward strangers and on identification with all humanity. Conceptually similar effects have been found in more ethnically diverse regions and countries (Bai, Ramos, & Fiske, 2020). Evidence of the favorable consequences of cross-group friendships on intergroup attitudes, expectations, and actions for both majority and minority group members comes from a variety of sources (Page-Gould et al., 2010; Pettigrew, 1997; Swart et al., 2011; Wright et al., 1997). For example, in South Africa, “Colored” junior high school students who had cross-group friendships with Whites held more trusting attitudes and less harmful intentions toward Whites in general (Stewart et al., 2011). The version of the thirty-six questions that reduced prejudice among individuals with hardened prejudicial attitudes was developed by Page-Gould et al. (2008). The significant role of self-disclosure in the beneficial effects of cross-group friendships appeared in work by Davies et al. (2011) and Turner et al. (2007).
30.The unitizing effect of an American identity was found by Riek et al. (2010) and Levendusky (2018), whereas a similar effect of genetic identity was confirmed by Kimel et al. (2016); Flade, Klar, & Imhoff (2019) uncovered the comparable impact of a mutual enemy; see also Shnabel, Halabi, & Noor (2013). The research on psychopaths’ susceptibility to the effects of shared identity was conducted by Arbuckle & Cunningham (2012). McDonald et al. (2017) provided the evidence that the regrettable tendency of groups to dehumanize rival groups (Haslem, 2006; Haslam & Loughnan, 2014; Kteily et al., 2015; Markowitz & Slovic, 2020; Smith, 2020) could be countered through the shared experience of basic human emotions.
Evidence that perspective-taking can enhance the sense of self–other overlap with another is considerable (Ames et al., 2008; Čehajić & Brown, 2010; Davis et al., 1996; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000); the Ames et al. (2008) research offered particularly creative support by showing that individuals who used perspective-taking to think about another experienced greater activation of the brain sector (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) associated with thinking about oneself. The work implicating perspective-taking in approval of favorable political policies toward minority groups was conducted by Berndsen & McGarty (2012), Čehajić & Brown (2010), and Broockman & Kalla (2016). The finding that recognizing that another has taken our perspective prompts us to feel greater solidarity with that person was obtained in six separate experiments by Goldstein, Vezich, & Shapiro (2014).
31.Although the waves, leaves, and flowers quote is typically attributed to Seneca, he probably didn’t author it. Most likely, it is from Bahá’u’lláh the founder of the Baha’i faith.
There is considerable evidence of the varying and often only temporary success of connections designed to reduce the dehumanization of rival groups or to build unity with them by highlighting common enemies or by finding some kind of shared identity or by undertaking perspective-taking (Catapano, Tormala, & Rucker, 2019; Dovidio, Gaertner, & Saguy, 2009; Goldenberg, Courtney, & Felig, 2020; Lai et al., 2016; Mousa, 2020; Over, 2020; Sasaki & Vorauer; 2013; Todd & Galinsky, 2014; Vorauer, Martens, & Sasaki, 2009). Evidence documenting the undercutting effects of perceived threat on unity-generating procedures is extensive (Gómez et al., 2013; Kauff et al., 2013; Morrison, Plaut, & Ybarra, 2010; Pierce et al., 2013; Riek, Mania, & Gaertner, 2006; Sassenrath, Hodges, & Pfattheicher, 2016; Vorauer & Sasaki, 2011).
32.For a review of evidence of likely greater genetic commonality among those who share families, friendships, and locales, as well as political and religious attitudes, see research included in this chapter’s endnotes 9, 12, 14, 16, and 17. The initial research on which Kahneman based the focusing illusion was published in Schkade & Kahneman (1998); for subsequent support, see Gilbert (2006), Krizan & Suls (2008), Wilson et al. (2000), and Wilson & Gilbert (2008). Related data come from a study investigating why items placed in the center of an array of brands on store shelves tend to be purchased more often. The one in the center gets more visual attention than those to the left or right. Furthermore, it is this greater attention that predicts the purchase decision (Atalay, Bodur, & Rasolofoarison, 2012). As regards the general rationale for and the consequences of the focusing illusion, there is evidence that what’s important gains our attention and what we attend to gains in importance. For instance, in the realm of attitudes, researchers have shown that we are organized cognitively so that the attitudes we can most readily access (focus upon) are the ones most important to us (Bizer & Krosnick, 2001). As well, any attitude we can readily access comes to be seen as more important (Roese & Olson, 1994). There is even evidence that concentrated visual attention to a consumer item increases the item’s judged worth by influencing sectors of the brain that govern perceived value (Lim, O’Doherty, & Rangel, 2011; Krajbich et al., 2009). The studies demonstrating how attentional focus from media coverage, landing-page imagery, and aged photos influenced perceived importance were performed by Corning & Schuman (2013), Mandel & Johnson (2002), and Hershfield et al. (2011).
Although not all methods have proved effective, considerable research indicates that it is possible to be trained to shift attention away from threatening entities toward more positive or at least less frightening ones (Hakamata et al., 2010; Mogg, Allison, & Bradley, 2017; Lazarov et al., 2017; Price et al., 2016). Besides training ourselves to focus away from the sometimes threatening aspects of out-groups, we can use focus in another way to defuse the resulting anxiety. It involves focusing away from the anxieties themselves and onto our strengths. When we experience these sorts of threats, the key is to engage in “self-affirmations” that channel attention to something about ourselves we value, such as a strong relationship with a family member, friend, or friendship network; it could also be to a trait we prize—our creativity or sense of humor, perhaps. The effect is to reorient our focus from threatened aspects of ourselves and the defensive responses that accompany them (prejudice, combativeness, self-promotion) to valued aspects of ourselves and the confident responses that follow (openness, equanimity, self-control). Numerous studies have recorded the ability of timely self-affirmations to reverse the negative impact of out-group threat (Čehajić-Clancy et al., 2011; Cohen & Sherman, 2014; Shnabel et al., 2013; Sherman, Brookfield, & Ortosky, 2017; Stone et al., 2011).
33.The studies documenting the greater dishonesty of employees of firms with togetherness-emphasizing Code of Conduct statements were published by Kouchaki, Gino, & Feldman (2019). The tendency to excuse such conduct from members of a “we”-group isn’t limited to humans. In another illustration, food theft by young chimpanzees is much more tolerated by adult food-holders if the young thief is their kin (Fröhlich et al., 2020).
The wisdom of a no-tolerance policy for proven unethical conduct can be seen in evidence of the toxic economic consequences of allowing such behavior within an organization. My colleagues and I have labeled these consequences as “the triple-tumor structure of organizational dishonesty.” We’ve argued that an organization that regularly allows the use of deceitful tactics by its personnel (against coworkers and also against customers, clients, stockholders, suppliers, distributors, and so on) will experience a trio of costly internal outcomes: declining employee performance, high employee turnover, and prevalent employee fraud and malfeasance. In addition, the outcomes will function like malignant tumors—growing, spreading, and eating progressively at the organization’s health and vigor. In a set of studies, literature reviews, and analyses, we found support for our assertions (Cialdini, 2016, chap. 13; Cialdini et al., 2019; Cialdini, Petrova, & Goldstein, 2004).
A no-tolerance policy of dismissals following ethical infractions in organizations, especially togetherness-minded organizations, may seem ruthless, and I can’t recall ever before advocating ruthlessness in human exchanges, yet, based on our findings, it seems justified. Of course, I recognize and am even generally sympathetic to counterarguments that stress forbearance, that say to err is human and people should be given a second chance, and that point to Shakespeare’s lines in The Merchant of Venice regarding treatment of ethical abusers: “The quality of mercy is not strained. / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath.” But, pertaining specifically to unethical conduct in workforce units, I (unlike the Bard) have seen considerable research documenting a set of corrosive and contagious consequences that would be foolish to underestimate.
1.Evidence of the perceptual and decisional narrowing produced by cognitive overload can be found in Albarracin & Wyer (2001); Bawden & Robinson (2009); Carr (2010); Chajut & Algom (2003); Conway & Cowan (2001); Dhami (2003); Easterbrook (1959); Hills (2019); Hills, Adelman, & Noguchi (2017); Sengupta & Johar (2001); and Tversky & Kahneman (1974).