The low-ball compliance technique: Task or person commitment?

Three experiments with 195 undergraduates examined the mediating process involved in the low-ball procedure for increasing compliance. In Exp I, Ss who agreed to but were not allowed to perform an initial request complied with a more costly version of the same request to a greater extent than did controls only when the 2nd request came from the same person as did the 1st request and not when it came from a different person. In Exp II, Ss who agreed to but were not allowed to carry out an initial low-cost request complied with a larger request from the same person to the same extent, whether the 1st request was related or unrelated to the 2nd. In Exp III, Ss were allowed or not allowed to perform an initial small request after agreeing to do so. Later, these Ss were approached by either the same or a different person with a larger 2nd request. All groups showed increased compliance over a control cell. However, Ss not allowed to perform the initial request who were approached by the same person for the 2nd request showed a higher rate of compliance than Ss in the other experimental conditions. Results suggest that an unfulfilled obligation to the requester, rather than a commitment to the initial target behavior, is responsible for the effectiveness of the low-ball technique. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Test of a concession procedure for inducing verbal, behavioral, and further compliance with a request to give blood.

The rejection-then-retreat technique for inducing compliance involves a sequencing of requests for favors in which a requester begins by asking a target person for an extreme favor and, after being refused, retreats to a smaller favor (the one that was desired from the outset). Previous research has suggested that the power of this technique derives from the target's perception that a requester who employs it has made a concession and from the action of a societal rule for reciprocation of concessions. On the basis of evidence on the consequences of the perception of concession in an interaction, it was predicted that the rejection-then-retreat procedure would be superior to comparison procedures that did not involve a concession. This was found to be the case for verbal compliance, behavior compliance, and compliance with requests for subsequent favors. 189 Ss on a university campus were approached on campus with requests to donate blood. 100% of Ss refused to donate blood every 2 mo for a period of 3 yrs, but 84% of them agreed to comply with the subsequent critical request to donate 1 pint of blood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational philosophy, policies, and objectives related to unethical decision behavior: A laboratory experiment.

Evaluated unethical decision behavior under different policy and environmental conditions. A laboratory methodology used a simulated marketing decision task that was expanded to include an ethical decision. Ss were 165 graduate business students who made a series of decisions on whether to pay a kickback or not. In Exp I, when Ss were given a letter from the corporate president supporting ethical behavior, their ethical behavior was higher than for Ss who received a letter that did not support ethical behavior. The size of the kickback resulted in a directional effect, but the effect was not statistically significant. In Exp II, profit goals did not significantly influence ethical behavior, but an organizational ethics policy was found to significantly reduce unethical decision behavior. In both studies, foreign nationality, Machiavellianism (Mach V Scale), and economic value orientation (Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values) were positively related to unethical decision behavior. In addition, a post hoc analysis showed than an ethical predisposition measure was strongly related to ethical decision behavior. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social judgeability: The impact of meta-informational cues on the use of stereotypes.

According to a social judgeability analysis, a crucial determinant of impression formation is the extent to which people feel entitled to judge a target person. Two experiments, with a total of 113 undergraduates, tested the impact of the subjective availability of individuating information on a social judgment independent of its actual presence. In Exp 1, Ss made a stereotypical judgment when they believed individuating information was present even if no information was in fact given. In Exp 2, Ss who thought they received individuating information made more extreme and confident judgments than Ss who thought they received category information. This indicates that Ss' judgments were not simply a function of implicit demand: The illusion of receiving individuating information led Ss to believe they possessed the necessary evidence for legitimate decision making. This result supports the existence of rules in the social inference process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The emergence of action.

People sometimes find themselves doing things that they did not set out to do. The theory of action identification suggests that, under these circumstances, people will then continue to perform this action as newly understood. The present 2 experiments investigated this action emergence phenomenon. Each was designed to test the idea that people would embrace a new understanding of action—an emergent act identity—to the degree that this identity provided a more comprehensive understanding of the action than did a previous act identity. In Exp I, with 61 undergraduates, some Ss were induced to think about the details of the act of going to college (e.g., studying), whereas others were led to focus on more comprehensive meanings (e.g., preparing for a career). Those who concentrated on details were more susceptible to an emergent understanding of the act. They came to agree with an article that suggested that going to college results in improving one's sex life or impairing one's sex life. Exp II, with 40 undergraduates, revealed that emergent identification can be translated into emergent action. Ss who were induced to think about the details of drinking coffee—by drinking their coffee in unwieldy cups—were more susceptible than those who drank from normal cups to a suggested action identification. They came to believe that drinking coffee amounted to making themselves seek or avoid stimulation, and they subsequently followed the suggested action identification by turning up or down the volume of music they were hearing. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Specificity of process, response, and stimulus in behavioral bioassays.

Reported 3 experiments which studied aspects of the behavioral specificity of the "biochemical transfer" phenomenon. In Exp I, using 120 common goldfish, an acquisition extract facilitated acquisition but not extinction, while an extinction extract facilitated extinction but not acquisition. In Exp II, using 60 Ss from Exp I and 20 additional Ss, brain extracts facilitated an avoidance response only if they originated in donors that made that same response; extracts from donors that did not respond, although exposed to identical stimuli, did not modify recipient behavior. In Exp III, the biochemical transfer effect was found to be stimulus specific in 48 large and 111 small Ss. Results suggest that the extracts in question are behavior specific and do not generally affect behavior in a global excitatory or global inhibitory way. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Of thoughts unspoken: Social inference and the self-regulation of behavior.

Suggests that perceivers draw dispositional inferences about targets (characterization) and then adjust those inferences with information about the constraints on the targets' behaviors (correction). Because correction is more effortful than characterization, perceivers who devote cognitive resources to the regulation of their own behavior should be able to characterize targets but unable to correct those characterizations. In Exp 1, unregulated Ss incidentally ignored an irrelevant stimulus while they observed a target's behavior, whereas self-regulated Ss purposefully ignored the same irrelevant stimulus. In Exp 2, unregulated Ss expressed their sincere affection toward a target, whereas self-regulated Ss expressed false affection. In both experiments, self-regulated Ss were less likely than unregulated Ss to correct their characterizations of the target. The results suggest that social interaction (which generally requires the self-regulation of ongoing behavior) may profoundly affect the way in which active perceivers process information about others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of distinctiveness, repetition and semantic priming on the recognition of face familiarity.

Examined the independence of effects of repetition from those of distinctiveness and semantic priming in the recognition of familiar faces. In Exp 1 (16 undergraduate Ss), repetition priming was shown to be additive with face distinctiveness in a face familiarity decision task, in which Ss made speeded familiarity decisions to a sequence of famous and unfamiliar faces. Exp 2 (16 undergraduate and postgraduate Ss) examined the combined effects of distinctiveness and semantic priming. The effect of distinctiveness was additive with that of semantic priming. Exp 3 (32 undergraduates and postgraduates) used a more powerful design in which effects of distinctiveness and semantic priming were assessed while all items were repeated 3 times during the course of the experiment. Effects of repetition and distinctiveness were again additive, as were effects of repetition and semantic priming. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Between a rock and a hard place: Self-concept regulating and communicative properties of distancing behaviors.

Investigated 2 properties of distancing behaviors—a class of deliberate and inadvertent behaviors that insulate persons from the consequences of negative self-discrepant behavior and signal that they should not be associated with that behavior. In Phase 1, high-choice Ss in a multiple audience variation of the induced compliance paradigm who read counterattitudinal essays on affirmative action in the presence of a Black woman did not show typical dissonance-induced attitude change. Phase 2 found that this absence of attitude change was significantly related to the extent to which Ss distanced themselves from their essays before reading them. In Phase 3, distancing behaviors also served as discounting cues for naive observers and were significantly related to their ratings of Ss' attitudes. These results are discussed in terms of the self-regulatory and communicative roles of distancing behaviors in social interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

You can't not believe everything you read.

Can people comprehend assertions without believing them? Descartes (1644/1984) suggested that people can and should, whereas Spinoza (1677/1982) suggested that people should but cannot. Three experiments support the hypothesis that comprehension includes an initial belief in the information comprehended. Ss were exposed to false information about a criminal defendant (Exps 1 and 2) or a college student (Exp 3). Some Ss were exposed to this information while under load (Exps 1 and 2) or time pressure (Exp 3). Ss made judgments about the target (sentencing decisions or liking judgments). Both load and time pressure caused Ss to believe the false information and to use it in making consequential decisions about the target. In Spinozan terms, both manipulations prevented Ss from "unbelieving" the false information they automatically believed during comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of group identity on resource use in a simulated commons dilemma.

Used 172 undergraduates in 3 experiments to assess the effects of making salient either a superordinate (collective) or subordinate (differentiating) group identity in heterogeneous groups. In Exp I, 22 male and 36 female Ss were assigned to either a superordinate-group identity (small community resident behavior vs other areas) or a subordinate-group identity (behavior of young people vs elderly people) condition and were asked to perform a computer task individually; Ss were led to believe they were interacting with 5 other persons (2 real and 3 bogus Ss) in their group in accumulating as many points as possible while making the resource last as long as possible. Bogus feedback about group behavior was given. In Exp II, 29 male and 19 female Ss were told that the bogus Ss were economics majors and were asked to perform as in Exp I. In Exp III, the level of social-group identity for 40 male and 26 female Ss was manipulated by varying the common fate of the group members. Results of all 3 experiments show support for the hypothesis that individual restraint would be most likely when a superordinate group identity was made salient and under conditions in which feedback indicated that the common resource was being depleted. A sex-response difference found in Exp I was not sustained in subsequent experiments. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing less and knowing more: The benefits of perceptual ignorance.

We suggest that dispositions are more automatically inferred from nonlinguistic than from linguistic behavior, and thus the attributional processing of linguistic behavior is more easily impaired by peripheral cognitive activities. In Exp 1, Ss observed an applicant who claimed to possess the requisite attributes for a desirable job, but who failed to display nonlinguistic behavior to support that claim. Ss who performed a concurrent visual detection task based their attributions primarily on the applicant's nonlinguistic behavior and drew less biased inferences than did control Ss. In Exps 2 and 3, Ss heard an unenthusiastic essayist who was constrained to read a political speech. Ss who performed either a concurrent visual detection task or a concurrent social influence task drew less biased inferences than did controls. These studies suggest that person perception includes subprocesses that differ in their characteristic degrees of automaticity and that performing simultaneous cognitive operations may enable perceivers to avoid certain kinds of inferential errors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prediction and perception of social motives.

In 2 experiments 70 male and female and 89 female undergraduates were required to observe and predict the behavior of a hypothetical "chooser" who made choices for him- or herself and for a hypothetical other in a series of decomposed games. The preference for outcomes, or social motivational orientation, of the chooser was preprogramed and varied across conditions. Ss were more readily able to detect the outcome preferences of choosers who made choices according to individualistic or competitive choice rules than of choosers who behaved in a prosocial or negatively self-interested manner. Furthermore, the prediction data from Exp II reveal that Ss tended to perceive choosers' own gain as an important component of most of the choosers' secondary motivation. Evidence from Ss' ratings of the choosers' personality attributes and estimates of the relative weights the choosers attached to their own and the other's gain (Exp II) indicated that Ss formed distinctive impressions of the choosers despite differences in predictive accuracy across conditions. Exp III with 64 undergraduates was performed to investigate the relationship between predictive accuracy and the mathematical complexity of the choosers' various choice rules; no evidence was found that mathematical complexity influenced Ss' performance on the prediction task. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of inhibition of return on voluntary and visually guided saccades.

Four experiments examined the effects of exogenously and endogenously activated inhibition of return (IOR) on endogenously generated and visually guided saccades. In Exps 1–3, 37 Ss responded to a peripheral target by making either a prosaccade (toward the target) or an antisaccade (toward the field opposite the target). Results of Exps 1 and 3 suggest that when IOR is activated by a peripheral precue, it functions as a location tagging mechanism that inhibits detection of signals at the tagged location; thus, IOR cannot simply be a motor alternation bias. Exp 2 showed that IOR could be generated by the execution of an endogenous saccade. Unlike Exp 1, however, IOR was manifest only in the prosaccade task. Exp 4, in which 24 Ss made endogenous saccades in response to a central arrow target, provided some evidence that IOR can influence the latency of endogenously generated saccades to the precued location. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of "voice" and peer opinions on responses to inequity.

Examined the effects of "voice" (participating in allocation decision making by expressing one's own opinion about the preferred allocation) on responses to an inequitable allocation. In addition to Ss' (82 female undergraduates) presence or absence of voice, Exp I manipulated (a) whether the allocation made by a "decision maker" (a confederate) was or was not made biased (due to self-interest) and (b) whether the S did or did not learn that a "co-worker" believed the allocation to be inequitable. Exp II, with 61 female high school students, manipulated presence/absence of voice and involved only a self-interested decision maker. In both experiments, the impact of voice was mediated by knowledge about the co-worker's opinion. When Ss had no knowledge about the co-worker's opinion (Exp I) or knew that the co-workers's opinion coincided with the decision maker's allocation (Exp II), there was evidence for a "fair process effect": Voice Ss expressed greater satisfaction than those with no voice. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speeded tests of implicit knowledge.

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that implicit and explicit tasks involve distinct modes of processing. Ss observed rule-ordered letter strings and were asked either to memorize the strings or to try to discover the underlying rules. In Exp 1, they then made well-formedness judgments of novel strings under long-deadline and short-deadline conditions. Rule-discovery Ss, but not memory Ss, were impaired by the short deadline. In Exp 2, all Ss made "similarity" judgments of the novel strings instead of the traditional "rule-based" judgments; there were now no differences between the rule-discovery and memory groups. In Exp 3, Ss explicitly instructed in the rules were significantly more impaired under short deadlines than were memory Ss. An analysis of decision times to individual strings for the rule-trained vs memory groups also showed qualitative differences consistent with the implicit–explicit distinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of out-group cues in determining social identity.

Examined the role of out-group cues in determining social identity and guiding behavior in 2 experiments with 131 undergraduates. In Exp I, Ss were exposed to a cue either of an in-group (Ss' college), a relevant out-group (a rival college), or an irrelevant out-group (a baseball team). Ss examined a list of words and were later asked to recognize those they had seen from a larger list in which words related to the 3 groups were embedded. Results indicate that Ss made more false recognitions of in-group related words when a relevant out-group was salient than when an irrelevant out-group was salient. Exp II tested a behavioral implication of Exp I: Out-group salience increases adherence to an in-group norm. In the 1st phase of Exp II, Ss were divided into 2 groups and deliberated 2 civil suits. Ss' in-group favored the plaintiffs for both cases. Ss were divided into new groups for the 2nd phase, and the same procedure was followed. This time, however, the in-group favored the defendants. In the 3rd phase, Ss were exposed to a cue either of the out-group in Phase 1 or Phase 2. Ss' judgments for 2 new cases were biased in the direction of the norm of the in-group that was associated with the salient out-group. Ss favored the plaintiff (or defendant) when the 1st (or 2nd) out-group was salient. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Face recall: An examination of some factors limiting composite production accuracy.

Contemporary face composite systems require scrutiny of many alternative features during the construction phase and judgments of similarity based on viewing features divorced from a facial context. The present study assessed the role of these factors in limiting composite production accuracy. In Exp I, 60 students observed a target face and made similarity judgments on sample eyes or mouths drawn from a Photo-fit Kit before attempting to identify the same features of the target. Exp II with 60 Ss was a replication, except that the interpolated judgments were made on the features in the context of a complete Photo-fit face resembling the target. In neither experiment did the Photo-fit components significantly interfere with recognition of the corresponding features of the target. In Exp III, the similarity ratings from memory provided by Ss in the previous experiments were compared with parallel sets of ratings furnished by 30 Ss in the presence of the target. Mean judgments of similarity made from memory on isolated features were discrepant from all other ratings. Results are interpreted as suggesting that whereas interference is not a major problem, judging resemblance from features seen in isolation may be a serious source of distortion in composite production. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)