Influence: Science and Practice (21 page)

Growing Legs to Stand On

For a pair of reasons we have already talked about, compliance professionals love commitments that produce inner change. First, that change is not just specific to the situation where it first occurred; it covers a whole range of related situations, too. Second, the effects of the change are lasting. So, once people have been induced to take actions that shift their self-images to that of, let’s say, public-spirited citizens, they are likely to be public-spirited in a variety of other circumstances where their compliance may also be desired. And they are likely to continue their public-spirited behavior for as long as their new self-images hold.

There is yet another attraction in commitments that lead to inner change—they “grow their own legs.” There is no need for the compliance professional to undertake a costly and continuing effort to reinforce the change; the pressure for consistency will take care of all that. After people come to view themselves as public-spirited citizens, they will automatically begin to see things differently. They will convince themselves that it is the correct way to be and will begin to pay attention to facts they hadn’t noticed before about the value of community service. They will make themselves available to hear arguments they hadn’t heard before favoring civic action and will find such arguments more persuasive than before. In general, because of the need to be consistent within their system of beliefs, they will assure themselves that their choice to take public-spirited action was right. What is important about this process of generating additional reasons to justify the commitment is that the reasons are
new
. Thus, even if the original reason for the civic-minded behavior were taken away, these newly discovered reasons alone might be enough to support their perceptions that they had behaved correctly.

The advantage to an unscrupulous compliance professional is tremendous. Because we build new struts to undergird choices we have committed ourselves to, an exploitative individual can offer us an inducement for making such a choice. After the decision has been made, the individual can remove that inducement, knowing that our decision will probably stand on its own newly created legs. Car dealers frequently try to benefit from this process through a trick they call “throwing a low-ball.” I first encountered the tactic while posing as a sales trainee at a local Chevrolet dealership. After a week of basic instruction, I was allowed to watch the regular salespeople perform. One practice that caught my attention right away was the low-ball.

For certain customers, a very good price, perhaps as much as $400 below competitors’ prices, is offered on a car. The good deal, however, is not genuine; the dealer never intends it to go through. Its only purpose is to cause prospects to
decide
to buy one of the dealership’s cars. Once the decision is made, a number of activities develop the customer’s sense of personal commitment to the car—a fistful of purchase forms are filled out, extensive financing terms are arranged, sometimes the customer is encouraged to drive the car for a day before signing the contract, “so you can get the feel of it and show it around the neighborhood and at work.” During this time, the dealer knows, customers typically develop a range of new reasons to support their choice and to justify the investments they have now made (Brockner & Rubin, 1985; Teger, 1980).

Then something happens. Occasionally an “error” in the calculations is discovered—maybe the salesperson forgot to add the cost of the air conditioner, and if the buyer still requires air-conditioning, $400 must be added to the price. To throw suspicion off themselves, some dealers let the bank handling the financing find the mistake. At other times, the deal is disallowed at the last moment; the salesperson checks with his or her boss, who cancels it because “the dealership would be losing money.” For only another $400 the car can be had, which, in the context of a multithousand-dollar deal, doesn’t seem too steep since, as the salesperson emphasizes, the cost is equal to competitors’ and “This is the car you chose, right?”

Another, even more insidious form of low-balling occurs when the salesperson makes an inflated trade-in offer on the prospect’s old car as part of the buy/trade package. The customer recognizes the offer as overly generous and jumps at the deal. Later, before the contract is signed, the used-car manager says that the salesperson’s estimate was $400 too high and reduces the trade-in allowance to its actual, blue-book level. The customer, realizing that the reduced offer is the fair one, accepts it as appropriate and sometimes feels guilty about trying to take advantage of the salesperson’s high estimate. I once witnessed a woman provide an embarrassed apology to a salesman who had used the last version of low-balling on her—this while she was signing a new-car contract giving him a huge commission. He looked hurt but managed a forgiving smile.

No matter which variety of low-balling is used, the sequence is the same: An advantage is offered that induces a favorable purchase decision. Then, sometime after the decision has been made, but before the bargain is sealed, the original purchase
advantage is deftly removed. It seems almost incredible that a customer would buy a car under these circumstances. Yet it works—not on everybody, of course, but it is effective enough to be a staple compliance procedure in many car showrooms. Automobile dealers have come to understand the ability of a personal commitment to build its own support system, a support system of new justifications for the commitment. Often these justifications provide so many strong legs for the decision to stand on that when the dealer pulls away only one leg, the original one, there is no collapse. The loss can be shrugged off by the customer who is consoled, even made happy, by the array of other good reasons favoring the choice. It never occurs to the buyer that those additional reasons might never have existed had the choice not been made in the first place.

After watching the low-ball technique work so impressively in the car showroom, I decided to test its effectiveness in another setting where I could see if the basic idea worked with a bit of a twist. That is, the car salespeople I observed threw the low-ball by proposing sweet deals, getting favorable decisions as a result, and then taking away the sweet part of the offers. If my thinking about the essence of the low-ball procedure was correct, I recognized that I should be able to get the tactic to work in a somewhat different way: I could offer a good deal, which would produce the crucial decisional commitment, and then I could
add
an
un
pleasant feature to the arrangement. Because the effect of the low-ball technique was to get an individual to stick with a deal, even after circumstances had changed to make it a poor one, the tactic should work whether a positive aspect of the deal was removed or a negative aspect was added.

So, to test this latter possibility, my colleagues John Cacioppo, Rod Bassett, John Miller, and I ran an experiment designed to get Introductory Psychology students at Ohio State University to agree to perform an unpleasant activity: to wake up very early to participate in a 7:00
A.M.
study “on thinking processes.” When calling one sample of students, we immediately informed them of the 7:00
A.M.
starting time. Only 24 percent were willing to participate. However, when calling a second sample of students, we threw a low-ball: We first asked if they wanted to participate in a study of thinking processes, and after they responded–56 percent of them positively—we mentioned the 7:00
A
.
M
. start time and gave them the chance to change their minds.
None
of them did. What’s more, in keeping with their commitment to participate, 95 percent of the low-balled students did come to the Psychology Building at 7:00
A.M.
as promised. I know this to be the case because I recruited two research assistants to be on site at that time to conduct the thinking processes experiment and to take the names of the students who appeared.
⁴

⁴
There is no foundation to the rumor that, in recruiting my research assistants for this task, I first asked if they wanted to administer a study on thinking processes and, after they agreed, informed them of the 7:00
A.M.
starting time.

   In addition to the just-described study, several other experiments have attested to the effectiveness of the low-ball procedure in a variety of circumstances (see Brownstein & Katzev, 1985; Burger & Petty, 1981; Joule, 1987; see Cialdini, Cacioppo, Bassett, & Miller, 1978, for full details).

The impressive thing about the low-ball tactic is its ability to make a person feel pleased with a poor choice. Those who have only poor choices to offer us are especially fond of the technique. We can find them throwing low-balls in business, social, and personal situations. For instance, there’s my neighbor Tim, a true low-ball aficionado. Recall that he’s the one who, by promising to change his ways, got his girlfriend, Sara, to cancel her impending marriage to another and take him back. Since her decision to choose Tim, Sara has become more devoted to him than ever, even though he has not fulfilled his promises. She explains this by saying that she has allowed herself to see all sorts of positive qualities in Tim she had never recognized before.

I know full well that Sara is a low-ball victim. Just as I had watched buyers fall for the give-it-and-take-it-away-later strategy in the car showroom, I watched her fall for the same trick with Tim. For his part, Tim remains the guy he has always been. Because the new attractions Sara has discovered (or created) in him are quite real for her, she now seems satisfied with the same arrangement that was unacceptable before her enormous commitment. The decision to choose Tim, poor as it may have been objectively, has grown its own supports and appears to have made Sara genuinely happy. I have never mentioned to Sara what I know about low-balling. The reason for my silence is not that I think her better off in the dark on the issue. As a general guiding principle, more information is always better than less information. It’s just that, if I said a word, I am confident she would hate me for it.

Standing Up for the Public Good

Depending on the motives of the person wishing to use them, any of the compliance techniques discussed in this book can be employed for good or for ill. It should not be surprising, then, that the low-ball tactic can be used for more socially beneficial purposes than selling new cars or reestablishing relationships with former lovers. One research project done in Iowa (Pallak, Cook, & Sullivan, 1980), for example, shows how the low-ball procedure can influence homeowners to conserve energy. The project began at the start of the Iowa winter when residents who heated their homes with natural gas were contacted by an interviewer. The interviewer gave them some energy-conservation tips and asked them to try to save fuel in the future. Although they all agreed to try, when the researchers examined the utility records of these families after a month and again at winter’s end, it was clear that no real savings had occurred. The residents who had promised to make a conservation attempt used just as much natural gas as did a random sample of their neighbors who had not been contacted by an interviewer. Good intentions coupled with information about saving fuel, then, were not enough to change habits.

Even before the project began, Pallak and his research team had recognized that something more would be needed to shift long-standing energy-use patterns. So they tried a slightly different procedure on a comparable sample of Iowa natural-gas users. These people, too, were contacted by an interviewer, who provided energy-saving hints and asked them to conserve, but for these families, the interviewer offered something else: Those residents agreeing to save energy would have their names publicized in newspaper articles as public-spirited, fuel-conserving citizens. The effect was immediate. One month later, when the utility companies checked their meters, the homeowners in this sample had saved an average of 422 cubic feet of natural gas apiece. The chance to have their names in the paper had motivated these residents to substantial conservation efforts for a period of a month.

Then the rug was pulled out. The researchers extracted the reason that had initially caused the people to save fuel. Each family that had been promised publicity received a letter saying it would not be possible to publicize its name after all.

At the end of the winter, the research team examined the effect the letter had on the natural-gas usage of the families. Did they return to their old, wasteful habits when the chance to be in the newspaper was removed? Hardly. For each of the remaining winter months, these families actually conserved
more
fuel than they had during the time they thought they would be publicly celebrated for it! In terms of percentage of energy savings, they had managed a 12.2 percent gas savings during the first month because they expected to see themselves lauded in the paper. However, after the letter arrived informing them to the contrary, they did not return to their previous energy-use levels; instead, they increased their savings to a 15.5 percent level for the rest of the winter.

Although we can never be completely sure of such things, one explanation for their persistent behavior presents itself immediately. These people had been low-balled into a conservation commitment through a promise of newspaper publicity. Once made, that commitment started generating its own support: The homeowners began acquiring new energy habits, began feeling good about their public-spirited efforts, began convincing themselves of the vital need to reduce American dependence on foreign fuel, began appreciating the monetary savings in their utility bills, began feeling proud of their capacity for self-denial, and most important, began viewing themselves as conservation-minded. With all these new reasons present to justify the commitment to use less energy, it is no wonder that the commitment remained firm even after the original reason, newspaper publicity, had been kicked away. (See
Figure 3.2
on page 88.)