Influence: Science and Practice (17 page)

Many expressed antipathy toward the Chinese Communists but at the same time praised them for “the fine job they had done in China.” Others stated that “although communism won’t work in America, I think it’s a good thing for Asia.” (Segal, 1954, p. 360)

It appears that the real goal of the Chinese was to modify, at least for a time, the hearts and minds of their captives. If we measure their achievement in terms
of “defection, disloyalty, changed attitudes and beliefs, poor discipline, poor morale, poor
esprit
, and doubts as to America’s role,” Segal concluded, “their efforts were highly successful.” Let’s examine more closely how they managed it.

The Magic Act

Our best evidence of people’s true feelings and beliefs comes less from their words than from their deeds. Observers trying to decide what people are like look closely at their actions. Researchers have discovered that people themselves use this same evidence—their own behavior—to decide what they are like; it is a primary source of information about one’s own beliefs, values, and attitudes (Bem, 1972; Vallacher & Wegner, 1985).

The rippling impact of behavior on one’s self-concept and future behavior can be seen in research investigating the effect of active versus passive commitments (Allison & Messick, 1988; Fazio, Sherman, & Herr, 1982). For instance, in one study, college students volunteered for an AIDS education project in the local schools. The researchers arranged for half to volunteer actively by filling out a form stating that they wanted to participate. The other half volunteered passively by
failing
to fill out a form stating that they
didn’t
want to participate. Three to four days later, when asked to begin their volunteer activity, the great majority (74 percent) who actually appeared for duty came from the ranks of those who had actively agreed to participate. What’s more, those who volunteered actively were more likely to explain their decisions by implicating their personal values, preferences, and traits (Cioffi & Garner, 1996). In all, it seems that active commitments give us the kind of information we use to shape self-image, which then shapes future actions, which solidify the new self-image.

Understanding fully this route to altered self-perception, the Chinese set about arranging the prison-camp experience so that their captives would consistently
act
in desired ways. Before long, the Chinese knew, these actions would begin to take their toll, causing the prisoners to change their views of themselves to align with what they had done.

Writing was one sort of committing action that the Chinese urged incessantly upon the captives. It was never enough for prisoners to listen quietly or even to agree verbally with the Chinese line; they were always pushed to write it down as well. Schein (1956) describes a standard indoctrination session tactic of the Chinese:

A further technique was to have the man write out the question and then the [pro-Communist] answer. If he refused to write it voluntarily, he was asked to copy it from the notebooks, which must have seemed like a harmless enough concession. (p. 161)

Oh, those “harmless” concessions. We’ve already seen how apparently trifling commitments can lead to further consistent behavior. As a commitment device, a written declaration has some great advantages. First, it provides physical evidence that an act has occurred. Once a prisoner wrote what the Chinese wanted, it was
very difficult for him to believe that he had not done so. The opportunities to forget or to deny to himself what he had done were not available, as they were for purely verbal statements. No; there it was in his own handwriting, an irrevocably documented act driving him to make his beliefs and his self-image consistent with what he had undeniably done. Second, a written testament can be shown to other people. Of course, that means it can be used to persuade those people. It can persuade them to change their own attitudes in the direction of the statement. More importantly for the purpose of commitment, it can persuade them that the author genuinely believes what was written.

People have a natural tendency to think that a statement reflects the true attitude of the person who made it (Gawronski, 2003). What is surprising is that they continue to think so even when they know that the person did not freely choose to make the statement. Some scientific evidence that this is the case comes from a study by psychologists Edward Jones and James Harris (1967), who showed people an essay that was favorable to Fidel Castro and asked them to guess the true feelings of its author. Jones and Harris told some of these people that the author had chosen to write a pro-Castro essay; they told other people that the author had been required to write in favor of Castro. The strange thing was that even those people who knew that the author had been assigned to do a pro-Castro essay guessed that the writer liked Castro. It seems that a statement of belief produces a
click
,
whirr
response in those who view it. Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, observers automatically assume that someone who makes such a statement means it (Allison, Mackie, Muller, & Worth, 1993).

Think of the double-barreled effects on the self-image of a prisoner who wrote a pro-Chinese or anti-American statement. Not only was it a lasting personal reminder of his action, it was also likely to persuade those around him that it reflected his actual beliefs. As we will see in
Chapter 4
, what those around us think is true of us is enormously important in determining what we ourselves think is true. For example, one study found that one week after hearing that they were considered charitable people, homemakers in New Haven, Connecticut, gave much more money to a canvasser from the Multiple Sclerosis Association (Kraut, 1973). Apparently the mere knowledge that someone viewed them as charitable caused these people to make their actions consistent with that view.

Savvy politicians have long used the committing character of labels to great advantage. One of the best at it was former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat. Before international negotiations began, Sadat would assure his bargaining opponents that they and the citizens of their country were widely known for their cooperativeness and fairness. With this kind of flattery, he not only created positive feelings, he also connected his opponent’s identities to a course of action that served his goals. According to master-negotiator, Henry Kissinger (1982), Sadat was successful because he got others to act in his interests by giving them a reputation to uphold.

Once an active commitment is made, then, self-image is squeezed from both sides by consistency pressures. From the inside, there is a pressure to bring self-image into line with action. From the outside, there is a sneakier pressure—a tendency
to adjust this image according to the way others perceive us (Schlenker, Dlugolecki, & Doherty, 1994). Because others see us as believing what we have written (even when we’ve had little choice in the matter), we once again experience a pull to bring self-image into line with the written statement.

In Korea, several subtle devices were used to get prisoners to write, without direct coercion, what the Chinese wanted. For example, the Chinese knew that many prisoners were anxious to let their families know that they were alive. At the same time, the men knew that their captors were censoring the mail and that only some letters were being allowed out of camp. To ensure that their own letters should be released, some prisoners began including in their messages peace appeals, claims of kind treatment, and statements sympathetic to communism. The hope was that the Chinese would want such letters to surface and would, therefore, allow their delivery. Of course, the Chinese were happy to cooperate because those letters served their interests marvelously. First, their worldwide propaganda effort benefited greatly from the appearance of pro-Communist statements by American servicemen. Second, in the service of prisoner indoctrination, the Chinese had, without raising a finger of physical force, gotten many men to go on record supporting the Communist cause.

A similar technique involved political essay contests that were regularly held in camp. The prizes for winning were invariably small—a few cigarettes or a bit of fruit—but were sufficiently scarce that they generated a lot of interest from the men. Usually the winning essay was one that took a solidly pro-Communist stand . . . but not always. The Chinese were wise enough to realize that most of the prisoners would not enter a contest that they thought they could win only by writing a Communist tract. Moreover, the Chinese were clever enough to know how to plant in the captives small commitments to communism that could be nurtured into later bloom. So, occasionally, the winning essay was one that generally supported the United States but that bowed once or twice to the Chinese view. The effects of this strategy were exactly what the Chinese wanted. The men continued to participate voluntarily in the contests because they saw that they could win with essays highly favorable to their own country. Perhaps without realizing it, however, they began to shade their essays a bit toward communism in order to have a better chance of winning. The Chinese were ready to pounce on any concession to Communist dogma and to bring consistency pressures to bear upon it. In the case of a written declaration within a voluntary essay, they had a perfect commitment from which to build toward collaboration and conversion.

Other compliance professionals also know about the committing power of written statements. The enormously successful Amway Corporation, for instance, has a way to spur their sales personnel to greater and greater accomplishments. Members of the staff are asked to set individual sales goals and commit themselves to those goals by personally recording them on paper:

One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and
write it down.
Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. There is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that down. You’ll be off and running.

If the Amway people have found “something magical about writing things down,” so have other business organizations. Some door-to-door sales companies use the magic of written commitments to battle the “cooling-off” laws that exist in many states. The laws are designed to allow customers a few days after agreeing to purchase an item to cancel the sale and receive a full refund. At first this legislation hurt the hard-sell companies deeply. Because they emphasize high-pressure tactics, their customers often buy, not because they want the products but because they are duped or intimidated into the sale. When the laws went into effect, these customers began canceling in droves.

The companies have since learned a beautifully simple trick that cuts the number of such cancellations drastically. They merely have the customer, rather than the salesperson, fill out the sales agreement. According to the sales-training program of a prominent encyclopedia company, that personal commitment alone has proved to be “a very important psychological aid in preventing customers from backing out of their contracts.” Like the Amway Corporation, these organizations have found that something special happens when people put their commitments on paper: They live up to what they have written down.

Another common way for businesses to cash in on the “magic” of written declarations occurs through the use of an innocent-looking promotional device. Before I began to study weapons of social influence, I used to wonder why big companies such as Procter & Gamble and General Foods are always running those “25-, 50-, or 100-words or less” testimonial contests. They all seem to be alike. A contestant is to compose a short personal statement that begins with the words, “I like the product because . . .” and goes on to laud the features of whatever cake mix or floor wax happens to be at issue. The company judges the entries and awards prizes to the winners. What puzzled me was what the companies got out of the deal. Often the contest requires no purchase; anyone submitting an entry is eligible. Yet, the companies appear to be willing to incur the costs of contest after contest.

I am no longer puzzled. The purpose behind the testimonial contest—to get as many people as possible to endorse a product—is the same as the purpose behind the political essay contests: to get endorsements for Chinese communism. In both instances the process is the same. Participants voluntarily write essays for attractive prizes that they have only a small chance to win. They know that for an essay to have any chance of winning at all, however, it must include praise for the product. So they search to find praiseworthy features of the product, and they describe them in their essays. The result is hundreds of POWs in Korea or hundreds of thousands of people in America who testify in writing to the products’ appeal and who, consequently, experience that magical pull to believe what they have written.

READER’S REPORT 3.2
From the Creative Director of a Large, International Advertising Agency

In the late 1990s, I asked Fred DeLucca, the founder and CEO of Subway restaurants, why he insisted in putting the prediction “10,000 stores by 2001” on the napkins in every single Subway. It didn’t seem to make sense, as I knew he was a long way from his goal, that consumers didn’t really care about his plan, and his franchisees were deeply troubled by the competition associated with such a goal. His answer was, “If I put my goals down in writing and make them known to the world, I’m committed to achieving them.” Needless to say, he not only has, he’s exceeded them.

Author’s note:
As of January 1, 2008, Subway had over 28,000 restaurants in 86 countries. So, as we will also see in the next section, written-down and publicly made commitments can be used not only to influence others in desirable ways but to influence ourselves similarly.