8 Influence, persuasion & obedience

Question 1

What is persuasion?

Answer 1

the act of changing a persons attitude or behaviour, without duress, just through communication with them/others

Question 2

What is obedience?

Answer 2

Compliance with the commands given by an authoritative figure

Question 3

What is compliance

Answer 3

When a person changes his or her behaviour in due to the request or direction of another person. doesn’t rely on a position of power or authority

Question 4

What is a floating voter?

Answer 4

Someone who isn’t particularly interested in politics - aschematic

Question 5

What is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 5

When your attitude doesn’t square with your behaviour

Question 6

How do we solve cognitive dissonance?

Answer 6

we strive to resolve dissonance.
Either changing behaviour or changing attitude, whichever is easiest (e.g. sour grapes - if we can’t obtain it, convince ourselves we don’t want it)

Question 7

Go through the hat dissonance thing:

Answer 7

• two option: hats are great or hats are a waste of money
• chooses the great option so go and buy the hat, going to convince yourself that they are and wanting to hang out with other people who like the hat and don’t say its a waste of money -effects future behaviour

Question 8

How do companies reduce dissonance?

Answer 8

Make adverts that are somewhat targeted at people that already own e.g. a jaguar - try to convince them it was a good idea and they should maintain their relationship with that company
-don’t want to be reminded about the affordable economical cars

Question 9

Festinger and Carlsmith 1959

Answer 9

• Ps had to undertake a really boring task for an hr (turning pegs)
• then asked to go and lie about the task being great to recruit a control P
• this creates dissonant conditions
• either paid $1 or $20 to do this
• when asked later how much they enjoyed task Ps paid $1 ranked the task enjoyment higher than those paid $20 because they had to resolve dissonance by convincing themselves they enjoyed it
• Ps paid $20 ranked it more enjoyable than the controls who didn’t have to lie

Question 10

What are the approaches to get compliance?

Answer 10

-foot in the door
(gradually build the request up)
-door in the face 
(ask something unreasonable so they say no and then ask something less unreasonable)
-low ball

Question 11

Foot in the door compliance:

what is it based on?

Answer 11

-called people and either straight away asked to come and look through their cupboards and take an inventory
-or asked them to fill out a questionnaire first then asked them
based on a change in self where once you comply you start to see yourself as someone who does things for others

Question 12

Freedman and Fraser 1966

Answer 12

foot in the door compliance

Question 13

Cardinal et al. 1975

Answer 13

door in the face compliance

based on rejection moderation - once you’ve rejected them once you feel bad so feel the need to help them out

Question 14

What is low balling?

Answer 14

Car sales technique - they tell you a price then ‘go check with manager’ and ‘forgot to add on certain taxes’ so price goes up but you’re now roped in so you agree even if the price is higher than what you would have originally agreed to.
Oooor
if there was an experiment going on at 7am they may only tell you its at 7am once you’ve agreed - some would say no but some would be low balled

Question 15

Cialdini et al 1975

Answer 15

Door in the face

Question 16

Cialdini et al 1978

Answer 16

low ball

Question 17

Biligs (1996) argument

Answer 17

There are no underlying principles of persuasion or we would have figured them out

Question 18

Stanley Milgrim

Answer 18

• electric shock student teacher experiment
• 65% of people went up to 450 volts even though it was marked as dangerous
• as soon as they were told they weren’t responsible they proceeded. - don’t see themselves as responsible - see themselves as agents