22.6: Professional Persuaders

Many people work in the persuasion professions. The success of professional advocates like advertising agents, lobbyists, social media influencers, trial lawyers, and politicians, as well as the success of social reformers and charity workers, depends on their ability to persuade others to do something. Their goal is to convince us to buy a new car, vote for Donald Trump or visit Key West.

Often, people in the persuasion professions have a bad reputation: the stereotypical used-car salesman would run over his own mother to clinch a deal. But in many cases, professional persuaders are admirable: the world is a better place because of those who try to convince us to give some of our time or money to those in need, or to stay indoors during a pandemic.

Often, the goal of professional persuaders is to manipulate our beliefs or attitudes in a way that will benefit them. For example, political life is increasingly a matter of advertising and image manipulation. Nowadays many candidates are marketed like consumer products, their message finetuned to reflect the latest poll results, their every word explained by spin doctors.

Professional Persuaders: Tricks of the Trade

There are many techniques for persuading people. Some involve pressuring them, but the most effective devices are the ones that people don’t even notice. For example, a real estate agent might exploit the contrast effect by first showing a prospective buyer a run-down, over-priced house right before showing the house they are really trying to sell. In this section, we will learn about three of the most effective techniques for getting people to do things without their even realizing that they are being manipulated.

The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

One very effective device is the foot-in-the-door technique. The foot-in-the-door technique involves getting someone to do or believe something that is reasonably small. After they do agree to the small request, the person is more likely to comply with a larger request or suggestion. Professional fund raisers are well-aware of this technique. Often, they first ask for a small donation, then come back later to ask for a larger one.

In a study, homemakers were asked a few questions about which soaps they used. A few days later, both the group who had answered these questions and another group who had not been previously contacted were asked if a survey team could come to their home and spend two hours recording every product that they owned. Homemakers who had agreed to the small requests (to answer a few questions about soap) were over twice as likely to accede to the much larger request.

An even more dramatic illustration of the foot-in-the-door technique comes from a 1966 study of a group of Palo Alto residents. Psychologists going door-to-door asked residents to display a modest three-inch sign saying BE A SAFE DRIVER. Two weeks later, another person was sent around, both to the people contacted earlier and to another group of people who hadn’t been previously contacted. He asked for permission to erect an enormous billboard on the resident’s front lawn that proclaimed DRIVE CAREFULLY and showed them a picture clearly depicting the billboard as an enormous monstrosity. Only 17% of the people who had not been contacted before agreed to the request. But 55% who had been contacted earlier and displayed the small, three-inch sign agreed. In other words, over half of those who had acceded to the earlier, smaller request, agreed to the bigger one.

The foot-in-the-door technique is commonly used by people in the persuasion professions. A salesperson at the door often asks for something small like a glass of water. Once the resident agrees to that request, the salesperson has a better chance of getting them to buy something. There aren’t many door-to-door salespeople nowadays, but telemarketers have adopted this technique too. It was also used, less innocently, by the Chinese during the Korean War. They made small, innocent sounding requests of their prisoners of war, and then moved very gradually on to larger requests.

Lowballing

There is a related phenomenon known as lowballing. This occurs when a person is asked to agree to something with incomplete or inaccurate information about its costs. Later, they learn that the true cost is higher. But having made the original commitment, they are more likely to accept the new cost than they would have been had they known about it up front.

For example, car dealers sometimes clinch a sale, go off to verify it with their boss, then return with the news that it’s going to cost just a little more than they’d thought. Someone might ask you for a ride home and when they get in your car announce that they live twenty miles away. In both cases, the person who made the original commitment is more likely to follow through on it than they would have been had they known about its cost at the time that they made their decision. The subjects made an initial commitment to be in the experiment and only later discovered what they had gotten themselves into.

The Door-in-the-Face Technique

The door-in-the-face technique is another device for eliciting compliance. The strategy here is to lead someone to believe or do something by first asking them to do something bigger (or to believe something less probable), which you know they will refuse. After the larger request is refused, the person is often more likely to do or believe the second, smaller, thing.

Robert Cialdini and his coworkers asked one group of people to volunteer to work as a counselor for two hours a week in a juvenile center for at least two years. Not surprisingly, no one agreed to this. Later, the people in this group and an equal number of people who had not been contacted before were asked to chaperone a group of juvenile delinquents on a trip to the zoo. People who had first been asked the much larger request (to become a counselor for two years) were over three times as likely to take the delinquents to the zoo as those who had not been asked. In another study, subjects were asked to contribute time to a good cause. Some of them were asked to contribute a lot of time. Most refused, but they were later asked to commit less time. Only 17% of those who were only asked for a small amount agreed, but 50% of those who were first asked for a large amount agreed to a smaller amount. This technique is common in bargaining and negotiating at all levels, from negotiations between nations to negotiations between parents and children.

Safeguards

People can resist these pressures, but it requires some thought. We often go along because we act without paying much attention to the situation. The following study illustrates the point. There was a line to use the only nearby photocopier at a library. A group of psychologists had a person ask to cut in front of others in the line. If the person simply asked to cut in without giving any reason, most of the people in the line refused. And if they gave a good reason like, “Could I cut in because I’m running late to pick up my child from school?” most people let them cut in. No surprises thus far.

What is surprising is that if the people conducting the study gave anything that had the format of a reason, most people let them cut in. For example, if they asked, “Could I cut in because I need to make some copies?” many people granted their request. These people’s minds weren’t really in gear, and the mere fact that it sounded vaguely like a reason, though it wouldn’t have seemed a good reason if they had thought about it, was all it took for them to allow someone to cut in front of them.