Influence: Science and Practice (44 page)

Clothes

A second kind of authority symbol that can trigger our mechanical compliance is clothing. Though more tangible than a title, the cloak of authority is every bit as fakeable. Police bunco files bulge with records of con artists whose methods include the quick change. In chameleon style, they adopt the hospital whites, priestly black, army green, or police blue that the situation requires for maximum advantage. Only too late do their victims realize that the garb of authority is hardly its guarantee.

A series of studies by social psychologist Leonard Bickman (1974) indicates how difficult it can be to resist requests that come from figures in authority attire. Bickman’s basic procedure was to ask passersby on the street to comply with some sort of odd request (for example, to pick up a discarded paper bag or to stand on the other side of a bus-stop sign). In half of the instances, the requester—a young man—was dressed in ordinary street clothes: the rest of the time, he wore a security guard’s uniform. Regardless of the type of request, many more people obeyed the requester when he was wearing the guard costume. Similar results have been obtained when the uniformed requester was female (Bushman, 1988).

Especially revealing was one version of the experiment in which the requester stopped pedestrians and pointed to a man standing by a parking meter 50 feet away. The requester, whether dressed normally or as a security guard, always said the same thing to the pedestrian, “You see that guy over there by the meter? He’s
overparked but doesn’t have any change. Give him a dime!” The requester then turned a corner and walked away so that by the time the pedestrian reached the meter, the requester was out of sight. The power of his uniform lasted, however, even after he was long gone: Nearly all of the pedestrians complied with his directive when he wore the guard costume, but fewer than half did so when he was dressed normally.
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A study by Mauro (1984) may explain why the requester in uniform was effective, even after he had left the scene. Police officers dressed in their traditional uniforms, versus more conventional clothing (blazers and slacks), were rated by observers as more fair, helpful, intelligent, honest, and good.

It is interesting to note that, later on, Bickman found college students guessed with considerable accuracy the percentage of compliance that occurred in the experiment when the requester wore street clothes (50 percent versus the actual 42 percent); yet, the students greatly underestimated the percentage of compliance when he was in uniform—63 percent versus the actual 92 percent (Bickman, 1974).

Less blatant in its connotation than a uniform, but nonetheless effective, is another kind of attire that has traditionally indicated authority status in our culture: the well-tailored business suit. It, too, can evoke a telling form of deference from total strangers. In a study conducted in Texas, for instance, researchers arranged for a 31-year-old man to violate the law by crossing the street against the traffic light on a variety of occasions. In half of the cases, he was dressed in a freshly pressed business suit and tie; on the other occasions, he wore a work shirt and trousers. The researchers watched from a distance and counted the number of pedestrians waiting at the corner who followed the man across the street: 3½ times as many people swept into traffic behind the suited jaywalker (Lefkowitz, Blake, & Mouton, 1955).

It is noteworthy that the two types of authority apparel shown by these studies to be influential—the guard uniform and the business suit—are combined deftly by confidence artists in a fraud called the
bank examiner scheme
. The target of the swindle can be anyone, but elderly persons living alone are preferred. The con begins when a man dressed in a properly conservative three-piece business suit appears at the door of a likely victim. Everything about the con man’s clothing speaks of propriety and respectability. The white shirt is starched; the wingtip shoes glow darkly. His suit is not trendy but classic: the lapels are three inches wide—no more, no less; the cloth is heavy and substantial, even in July; the tones are muted—business blue, business gray, business black.

He explains to his intended victim—perhaps a widow he secretly followed home from the bank a day or two earlier—that he is a professional bank examiner who, in the course of auditing the books of her bank, has found some seeming irregularities. He thinks he has spotted the culprit, a bank officer who is regularly doctoring reports of transactions in certain accounts. He says that the widow’s account may be one of these, but he can’t be sure until he has hard evidence; therefore, he has come to ask for her cooperation. Would she help out by withdrawing
her savings so a team of examiners and responsible bank officials can trace the record of the transaction as it passes across the suspect’s desk?

Often, the appearance and presentation of “bank examiner” are so impressive that the victim never thinks to check on their validity with even a simple phone call. Instead, she drives to the bank, withdraws all her money, and returns home with it to wait with the examiner for word on the success of the trap. When the message comes, it is delivered by a uniformed “bank guard” who arrives after closing hours to announce that all is well—apparently, the widow’s account was not one of those being tampered with. Greatly relieved, the examiner offers gracious thanks and, since the bank is now conveniently closed, instructs the guard to return the widow’s money to the vault, to save her the trouble of doing so the next day. With smiles and handshakes all around, the guard leaves with the funds while the examiner expresses a few more minutes of thanks before he, too, exits. Naturally, as the victim eventually discovers, the “guard” is no more a guard than the “examiner” is an examiner. What they are is a pair of bunco artists who have recognized the capacity of carefully counterfeited uniforms to click us into mesmerized compliance with “authority.”

Trappings

Aside from its function in uniforms, clothing can symbolize a more generalized type of authority when it serves an ornamental purpose. Finely styled and expensive clothes carry an aura of status and position, as do similar trappings such as jewelry and cars. The last of these status symbols is particularly interesting in the United States where “the American love affair with the automobile” gives it unusual significance.

According to the findings of a study done in the San Francisco Bay area, owners of prestige autos receive a special kind of deference from others. The experimenters discovered that motorists would wait significantly longer before honking their horns at a new, luxury car stopped in front of a green traffic light than at an older, economy model. The motorists had little patience with the economy-car driver: Nearly all sounded their horns, and the majority of these did so more than once; two simply rammed into the rear bumper. So intimidating was the aura of the prestige automobile, however, that 50 percent of the motorists waited respectfully behind it, never touching their horns until it moved on (Doob & Gross, 1968).

Later the researchers asked college students what they would have done in such situations. Compared to the actual findings of the experiment, the students consistently underestimated the time it would take them to honk at the luxury car. The male students were especially inaccurate, feeling that they would honk faster at the prestige- than at the economy-car driver; of course, the study itself showed just the opposite. Note the similarity of this pattern to much other research on authority pressures. As in Milgram’s research, the midwestern hospital nurses’ study, and the security guard uniform experiment, people were unable to predict correctly how they or others would react to authority influence. In each instance, the effect
of such influence was grossly underestimated. This property of authority status may account for much of its success as a compliance device. Not only does it work forcefully on us, but it does so unexpectedly.

Defense

One protective tactic we can use against authority status is to remove its element of surprise. Because we typically misperceive the profound impact of authority (and its symbols) on our actions, we become insufficiently cautious about its presence in compliance situations. A fundamental form of defense against this problem, therefore, is a heightened awareness of authority power. When this awareness is coupled with a recognition of how easily authority symbols can be faked, the benefit will be a properly guarded approach to situations involving authority influence attempts.

Sounds simple, right? And in a way it is. A better understanding of the workings of authority influence should help us resist it. Yet, there is a perverse complication—the familiar one inherent in all weapons of influence: We shouldn’t want to resist authority altogether or even most of the time. Generally, authority figures know what they are talking about. Physicians, judges, corporate executives, legislative leaders, and the like have typically gained their positions through superior knowledge and judgment. Thus, as a rule, their directives offer excellent counsel.

Authorities, then, are frequently experts; indeed, one dictionary definition of an authority is an expert. In most cases, it would be foolish to try to substitute our less informed judgments for those of an expert, an authority. At the same time, we have seen in settings ranging from street corners to hospitals that it would be foolish to rely on authority direction in all cases. The trick is to be able to recognize without much strain or vigilance when authority directives are best followed and when they are not.

Authoritative Authority

Posing two questions to ourselves can help enormously to determine when authority directives should and should not be followed. The first question to ask when we are confronted with what appears to be an authority figure’s influence attempt is “Is this authority truly an expert?” This question focuses our attention on two crucial pieces of information: the authority’s credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the topic at hand. By turning in this simple way to the
evidence
for authority status, we can avoid the major pitfalls of automatic deference. An illustration or two is in order.

Let’s examine the highly successful Robert Young Sanka commercial in this light. If, rather than responding to his “Marcus Welby, M.D.” association, people had focused on Young’s actual status as an authority, I am confident that the commercial would not have had so long and productive a run. Obviously, Robert Young did not possess a physician’s training or knowledge. We all know that. What he did
possess, however, was a physician’s
title
, “M.D.” Now, clearly, it was an empty title, connected to him in our minds through the device of playacting. We all know that, but isn’t it fascinating how, when we are
whirring
along, what is obvious often doesn’t matter unless we pay specific attention to it?

That is why the “Is this authority truly an expert?” question can be so valuable—it brings our attention to the obvious. It moves us effortlessly away from a focus on possibly meaningless symbols toward a consideration of genuine authority credentials. What’s more, the question forces us to distinguish between relevant authorities and irrelevant authorities. This distinction is easy to forget when the push of authority pressure is combined with the rush of modern life. The Texas pedestrians who bustled into city traffic behind a business-suited jaywalker are prime examples. Even if the man were the business authority his clothes suggested he might be, he was unlikely to be a greater authority on crossing the street than those who followed him into traffic.

Still, they did follow, as if his label,
authority
, overwhelmed the vital difference between relevant and irrelevant forms. Had they bothered to ask themselves whether he represented a true expert in the situation, someone whose actions indicated superior knowledge, I expect the result would have been quite different. The same process applies to Robert Young, a man who was not without expertise. He had a long career with many achievements in a difficult business. However, his skills and knowledge were as an actor, not a doctor. When, in viewing the famous coffee commercial, we focus on his true credentials, we realize quickly that he should be no more believed than would be any other successful actor who claims that Sanka is healthful.

Sly Sincerity

Suppose, though, that we are confronted with an authority who we determine
is
a relevant expert. Before submitting to authority influence, we should ask a second simple question, “How truthful can we expect the expert to be?” Authorities, even the best informed, may not present their information honestly to us; therefore, we need to consider their trustworthiness in the situation. Most of the time we do. We allow ourselves to be swayed more by experts who seem to be impartial than by those who have something to gain by convincing us (Eagly, Wood, & Chaiken, 1978); research has shown this to be true around the world (McGuinnies & Ward, 1980) and in children as young as second-graders (Mills & Keil, 2005). By wondering how an expert stands to benefit from our compliance, we give ourselves another safety net against undue and automatic influence. Even knowledgeable authorities in a field will not persuade us until we are satisfied that their messages represent the facts faithfully (Van Overwalle & Heylighen, 2006).

When asking ourselves about an authority’s trustworthiness, we should keep in mind a little tactic compliance practitioners often use to assure us of their sincerity: They will argue somewhat against their own interests. Correctly practiced, this approach can be a subtle yet effective device for “proving” their honesty. Perhaps they will mention a small shortcoming in their position or product. Invariably though, the drawback will be a secondary one that is easily overcome by more significant advantages—“Avis: We’re number two, but we try harder”; “L’Oreal, We’re more expensive but you’re worth it.” By establishing their basic truthfulness on minor issues, the compliance professionals who use this ploy can then be more believable when stressing the important aspects of their argument (Hunt, Domzal, & Kernan, 1981; Settle & Gorden, 1974; Ward & Brenner, 2006).