Influence: Science and Practice (43 page)

³
Instructive of the reach of the authority principle is evidence that ersatz experts are given credence in domains beyond medicine and homemaking. For instance, in a January 24, 2001 TV interview with actor Martin Sheen, host Brian Williams pursued a line of questions regarding Mr. Sheen’s views of the appropriateness of presidential decisions to accept gifts and to pardon criminals just before leaving office. Mr. Sheen dutifully offered his opinions even though his relevant experience to that point was limited to playing the role of a U.S. president on the TV series
West Wing
.

Connotation Not Content

From the first time I saw it, I found the most intriguing feature of Robert Young’s Sanka commercial to be its ability to use the influence of the authority principle without ever providing a real authority. The appearance of authority was enough. This tells us something important about unthinking reactions to authority figures. When in a
click, whirr
mode, we are often as vulnerable to the symbols of authority as to the substance.

Several of these symbols can reliably trigger our compliance in the absence of the genuine substance of authority. Consequently, these symbols are employed extensively by those compliance professionals who are short on substance. Con artists, for example, drape themselves with the titles, the clothes, and the trappings of authority. They love nothing more than to emerge elegantly dressed from a fine automobile and to introduce themselves to their prospective “marks” as Doctor or Judge or Professor or Commissioner Someone. They understand that when they are so adorned their chances for compliance are greatly increased. Each of these three types of symbols of authority—titles, clothes, and trappings—has its own story and is worth a separate look.

Titles

Titles are simultaneously the most difficult and the easiest symbols of authority to acquire. To earn a title normally takes years of work and achievement. Yet, it is possible for somebody who has put in none of this effort to adopt the mere label and receive a kind of automatic deference. As we have seen, actors in TV commercials and con artists do it successfully all the time.

I recently talked with a friend—a faculty member at a well-known eastern university—who provided a telling illustration of the way our actions are frequently more influenced by a title than by the nature of the person claiming it. My friend travels quite a bit and often finds himself chatting with strangers in bars, restaurants, and airports. He says that he has learned through much experience during these conversations never to use his title of professor. When he does, he finds that the tenor of the interaction changes immediately. People who have been spontaneous
and interesting conversation partners for the previous half hour become respectful, accepting, and dull. His opinions that before may have produced a lively exchange now generate extended (and highly grammatical) statements of accord. Annoyed and slightly bewildered by the phenomenon—because as he says, “I’m still the same guy they’ve been talking to for the last 30 minutes, right?”—my friend now regularly lies about his occupation in such situations.

What an eccentric shift from the more typical pattern in which certain compliance practitioners lie about titles they
don’t
truly have. Either way, however, such practiced dishonesty makes the same point about the ability of a symbol of authority to influence behavior.

I wonder whether my professor friend—who is somewhat short—would be so eager to hide his title if he knew that, besides making strangers more accommodating, it also makes them see him as taller. Studies investigating the way in which authority status affects perceptions of size have found that prestigious titles lead to height distortions. In one experiment conducted on five classes of Australian college students, a man was introduced as a visitor from Cambridge University in England. However, his status at Cambridge was represented differently in each of the classes. To one class, he was presented as a student; to a second class, a demonstrator; to another, a lecturer; to yet another, a senior lecturer; to a fifth, a professor. After he left the room, the class was asked to estimate his height. It was found that with each increase in status, the same man grew in perceived height by an average of a half-inch, so that as the “professor” he was seen as 2½ inches taller than as the “student” (P. R. Wilson, 1968). Another study found that after winning an election, politicians become taller in the eyes of the citizenry (Higham & Carment, 1992).

Because we see size and status as related, it is possible for certain individuals to benefit by substituting the former for the latter. In some animal societies, in which the status of an animal is assigned on the basis of dominance, size is an important factor in determining which animal will achieve which status level in the group.
⁴

⁴
Subhumans are not alone in this regard, even in modern times. For example, since 1900 the U.S. presidency has been won by the taller of the major party candidates in nearly 90 percent of the elections. Research suggests that the height advantage may also apply to candidates for affection in contests of the heart: women are significantly more likely to respond to a man’s published personal ad when he describes himself as tall. Interestingly for female ad-runners, size works in the opposite direction. Women who report being short and weighing less get more male/mail action (Lynn & Shurgot, 1984; Shepperd & Strathman, 1989).

Usually, in combat with a rival, the larger and more powerful animal wins. To avoid the harmful effects to the group of such physical conflict, however, many species employ methods that frequently involve more form than fracas. The two rivals confront each other with showy aggression displays that invariably include size-enhancing tricks. Various mammals arch their backs and bristle their coats; fish extend their fins and puff themselves up with water; birds unfurl and flutter their wings. Very often, this exhibition alone is enough to send one of the histrionic warriors into retreat leaving the contested status position to the seemingly larger and stronger rival.

DILBERT

High Expectations
Cartoonist Scott Adams’ depiction is not so far-fetched. Research indicates that tall men earn more than their shorter contemporaries and are more likely to rise to positions of leadership (Chaiken, 1986; Judge & Cable, 2004). And, although there are no data directly to the point, I would guess that Adams is right about silver hair, too.

DILBERT:
©
Scott Adams. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

Fur, fins, and feathers. Isn’t it interesting how these most delicate of parts can be exploited to give the impression of substance and weight? There are two lessons for us here. One is specific to the association between size and status: The connection of those two features can be profitably employed by individuals who are able to fake the first to gain the appearance of the second. This possibility is precisely why con artists, even those of average or slightly above average height, commonly wear lifts in their shoes. The other lesson is more general: The outward signs of power and authority frequently may be counterfeited with the flimsiest of materials. Let’s return to the realm of titles for an example—an example that involves what, in several ways, is the scariest experiment I know. A group of researchers, composed of doctors and nurses with connections to three midwestern hospitals, became increasingly concerned with the extent of mechanical obedience to doctors’ orders on the part of nurses. It seemed to the researchers that even highly trained and skilled nurses were not using that training or skill sufficiently to check on a doctor’s judgment; instead, when confronted with a physician’s directives, they would simply defer.

We saw how this process accounted for the case of the rectally administered ear drops, but the midwestern researchers took things several steps further. First, they wanted to find out whether such cases were isolated incidents or representative of a widespread phenomenon. Second, they wanted to examine the problem in the context of a serious treatment error: the gross over-prescription of an unauthorized drug to a hospital patient. Finally, they wanted to see what would happen if they physically removed the authority figure from the situation and substituted an unfamiliar voice on the phone, offering only the frailest evidence of authority—the claimed title “doctor.”

One of the researchers made an identical phone call to 22 separate nurses’ stations on various surgical, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric wards. He identified himself as a hospital physician and directed the answering nurse to give 20 milligrams of a drug (Astrogen) to a specific ward patient. There were four excellent reasons for the nurse’s caution in response to this order: (1) the prescription was transmitted by phone, in direct violation of hospital policy; (2) the medication itself was unauthorized. Astrogen had not been cleared for use nor placed on the ward stock list; (3) the prescribed dosage was obviously and dangerously excessive. The medication containers clearly stated that the “maximum daily dose” was only 10 milligrams, half of what had been ordered; (4) the directive was given by a man the nurse had never met, seen, or even talked with before on the phone. Yet, in 95 percent of the instances, the nurses went straight to the ward medicine cabinet where they secured the ordered dosage of Astrogen and started for the patient’s room to administer it. It was at this point that they were stopped by a secret observer, who revealed the nature of the experiment (Hofling, Brotzman, Dalrymple, Graves, & Pierce, 1966).

The results are frightening indeed. That 95 percent of regular staff nurses complied unhesitatingly with a patently improper instruction of this sort must give us all as potential hospital patients great reason for concern. What the midwestern study shows is that the mistakes are hardly limited to the trivial slips in the administration of harmless ear drops or the like, but extend to grave and dangerous blunders.

In interpreting their unsettling findings, the researchers came to an instructive conclusion:

In a real-life situation corresponding to the experimental one, there would, in theory, be two professional intelligences, the doctor’s and the nurse’s, working to ensure that a given procedure be undertaken in a manner beneficial to the patient or, at the very least, not detrimental to him [or her]. The experiment strongly suggests, however, that one of these intelligences is, for all practical purposes, nonfunctioning. (Hofling et al., 1966, p. 176)

It seems that, in the face of a physician’s directives, the nurses unhooked their “professional intelligences” and moved to a
click, whirr
form of responding. None of their considerable medical training or knowledge was engaged in the decision about what to do. Instead, because obedience to legitimate authority had always been the most preferred and efficient action in their work setting, they were willing to err on the side of automatic obedience. It is all the more instructive that they have traveled so far in this direction that their error had come in response not to genuine authority but to its most easily falsified symbol—a bare title.
⁵

⁵
Additional data collected in the Hofling et al. study suggest that nurses may not be conscious of the extent to which the title “doctor” sways their judgments and actions. A separate group of 33 nurses and student nurses were asked what they would have done in the experimental situation. Contrary to the actual findings, only two predicted that they would have given the medication as ordered.

READER’S REPORT 6.2
From a Florida-Based Physician

The title MD carries significantly more authority when placed in the visual context of a white coat. At first, I hated to wear white coats but later in my career came to understand that the garment carries power. On multiple occasions when I started work in a new hospital rotation, I made it a point to wear the white coat. Without fail my transition went smoothly. Interestingly, physicians are highly aware of this and have even created a pecking order assigning medical students the shortest white coats, while residents in training get medium length coats, and attending physicians have the longest white coats. In hospitals where nurses are aware of this hierarchy, they rarely question the orders of “long coats”; but when interacting with “short coats,” hospital staffers make alternative medical diagnosis and therapy suggestions openly—and sometimes rudely.

Author’s note:
This Reader’s Report makes an important point: In hierarchical organizations, not only are those with authority status treated respectfully, those without such status are often treated disrespectfully. As we saw in the present account and as we will see in the next section, what one wears can signal to others which form of this treatment seems deserved.