complience

Question 1

What is compliance?

Answer 1

• A means of social influence used to reach goals or attain social or personal gains
• Factors that influence compliance in an individual:
• Group strength, group size, immediacy, similarity
• More likely to comply if:
• Sharing something in common with the person making a request
• Group affiliation, if people are important to us we are more likely to comply (compliance with social pressure)
• More people present the higher likelihood to comply
• Important to also be in the immediate presence of a group

Question 2

foot in the door technique:

Answer 2

• ask a small request – this is then accepted- then you ask for the real request.
• Freedman and Fraser (1966)- small request was to put up a small sign or to sign a petition. The large request was to install in their front lawn a very large sign saying drive carefully. They found 20% allowed the large sign in the control group (no small request first), 50% allowed it in the experimental group (who had small request first)
• However, the foot in the door technique is not as robust as assumed: the time between the 2 requests is crucial, e.g. asking 2 weeks later wont work. Findings also show the sex of the experimenter might affect the results (Beaman et al., 1983)

Question 3

door in the face technique

Answer 3

• Give a huge request- which I rejected- then give the real request
• Cialdini et al., (1975)- studied unpaid student counsellors field trip experiment-students were asked to juvenile delinquents for 2 years, which most said no as it’s a lot to ask. They were then asked to act as a chaperone for only 2 hours for these juvenile delinquents. FINIDNGS- 50% said yes when large request was also made. When only real request was made it was 16.6%. There was also a third condition; exposure control, ppts were given the choice 25 %, showing giving people autonomy is also effective.

Question 4

lowball technique

Answer 4

• A persuader gets you to commit to some action and then, before you perform the behavior, they increase the ‘cost’ of that same behavior
• Cialdini et al., (1978)- asked students to participate in an experiment, after they agreed he then revealed it will take place at 7 am (7 am being the real cost). More likely to stick with the experiment when they agreed first
• We see this technique with salespeople

Question 5

• foot in the door technique vs low ball technique

Answer 5

JOULE 1987
* Students were requested to stop smoking for 18 hours for 30 French francs. The researchers used either FITD or LB technique
* Results- found the low-ball technique was more effective than the foot in the door technique
* This may be as they already agreed, they feel obliged?

Question 6

explain the norm of reciprocity in compliance

Answer 6

• Doing a favor for a person before asking them to do something for you
• The persuader relies on the accepted convention that people will treat others as they are treated themselves
• Regan’s (1971)- confederate gave ppts soft drinks before asking them for the real favor which was to buy a raffle ticket. When people were given the soft drink they were more likely to be buy the tickets

Question 7

power and compliance

Answer 7

• Compliance is linked to the perceived power exhibited by the source of influence
• Power- the capacity to influence other whilst resisting their attempts to influence
• Frech & Raven, 1959, 1993)- types of power- reward power (power to reward good behaviour), coercive power(power to threaten for non compliance), informational power (seen as a source of information has power, so more likely to comply), expert power (more likely to comply to an expert), legitimate power (person making the request has power in status e.g. poliecofficer), referent power (Attracted to the source of power)