Summary of Influence: Science and Practice by Cialdini - 5th edition

How can social aspects influence our decisions?

To show how social aspects can influence our decisions, we can take a look at a story about a friend who owns a jewelry store, desperately trying to sell some left-over turquoise pieces that no buyer was interested in so far. When ultimately deciding to put a sign in front of the display case, saying "price X 1/2", the shopkeeper's assistant accidentally put up a sign that read "price X 2". Within a few days, the previously disregarded pieces had been sold! Instead of using difficult calculations of how much the jewelry could actually be worth, buyers relied on the common stereotype of "good is expensive". This is a standard strategy and this shortcut is most often used when we are uncertain of the quality of an item.

What are fixed-action patterns and how do they influence our behaviors?

Scientists in the field of ethology, which is the observation of animals in their natural environment, have found several of those blindly automatic behavioral patterns across different species. These so called fixed-action patterns are not simply restricted to stand-alone behaviors but can also involve complex patterns like mating rituals. These sequences are performed in the same manner and in the same order every time they occur. The more colorful expression "click, whirr" behaviors is used, referring to the sound of a tape recorder. With a click, a previously recorded tape is put into the system, and with a whirr, the tape starts rolling. However, there seems to be a disadvantage to the way the tape is activated. During mating season for example, when some male birds engage in fights over territory and partners, it is not an enemy in general that leads to the expression of aggressive behaviors but rather merely some features, so called trigger features (such as color of feathers). Not only aggressive behavior can be triggered and mislead this way. Take the example of mother turkeys who respond exclusively to the cheeping sound their chicks make when providing care and food. When a stuffed predator (e.g. a polecat) is equipped with a tape recorder that emits the same cheeping sounds, the turkey will act as if it is one of its offspring, until the tape is turned off: instantly, the behavior will switch from caring to aggressive attacks.

Two things need to be mentioned: first of all, those fixed-action patterns are appropriate most of the time. Second of all, they are not restricted to the animal kingdom; humans rely on them as well.

It seems clear to almost everyone, that we are more likely to do somebody a favor if a reason is provided. This long established principle in social psychology led to a series of interesting studies. One of those was conducted by Ellen Langer and her colleagues (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978). In a copy-shop, they asked people if they would be willing to let them cut in line for the copy machine. Two conditions were tested, one that provided a reason ("because I'm in a rush"), one that did not. The results were clear: 94% (reason) vs. 60% (no reason). But the automaticity of the responses went even further. The researchers suggested that it was merely the word because that triggered the compliance to let the person skip ahead in line. They introduced a third condition, containing the question and no true reason ("Can I cut in line because I need to make some copies"). Again, 93% complied with the request.

Those patterns, may it be the "good= expensive" or the "no-favor without reason" shortcut, have been formed throughout our whole life. As previously mentioned, they are reliable in most instances and since they save energy, time, and (mental) capacities, they are simply essential in a complex environment.

What other sorts of mental shortcuts exist?

Some other mental shortcuts have been explained in the last years. They are called judgmental heuristics and will be the content of further chapters. They all share the quality of automatic responding, meaning that they involve mechanical responses. More distinguished reactions that result from a thorough analysis of information are called controlled responding. Research leads to the assumption that we are more likely to employ controlled responding when we desire and are able to analyze something in a careful manner. One study that supports this finding was conducted by Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman (1981). They exposed students at a university to a speech that asked about a new rule that would affect only some of them (new requirements for graduation beginning next year). Those who did not have to fear any personal consequences because they would graduate before the rule would come into effect were simply persuaded by the expertise of the speaker, who was introduced as an educational expert. The other group however, did not pay any attention to the speaker's expertise but rather exclusively considered the quality of his arguments.

What are some of the drawbacks related to mental shortcuts?

Although all of the previously mentioned shortcuts as well as those that will follow in the upcoming chapters serve the important function of managing everyday life, they are sometimes flawed and occasionally result in deadly mistakes. Perhaps the most common instance in which an over-reliance on an expert's knowledge can lead to drastic consequences is known as Captainitis. The term describes the finding that in airplane crashes caused by obvious errors made by the captain, those mistakes were not corrected by the other members of the crew. Certainly, they used the mental shortcut of "the expert is always right".

Apart from this less common drawback, fixed-action patterns can also be exploited by professionals who know how to use them for their advantages.

Ethology again serves as a good illustrator of this vulnerability. There is a special class of organisms called mimics who evoke desired behaviors in other animals by imitating some of their specific trigger features. An example is the female firefly Photuris which mimics a certain blinking code of another family of fireflies, called Photinus. The Photinus male mistakenly interprets the blinking as one of his female counterparts and prepares to mate, only to discover too late that it was a hungry Photuris that emitted the flashes.

This mimicry behavior can be observed even to such primitive structures as viruses and pathogens that imitate features of genuine cells or hormones to enter the immune system of a host.

There is one aspect of true experts in the profession of exploiting our vulnerability to mental shortcuts. They most often do so without much effort. This can be compared to the Japanese martial art of jujitsu, in which the master would use the power of principles like gravity, leverage etc., power that is already present in the situation. Translating this to the world of social influence, using our own flaws and (occasionally) misleading shortcuts, the professional not only needs to exert less force, he or she can also easily hide the appearance of manipulation.

A good example how this can work is the application of the contrast principle. This principle has been established in psychology for a long time and it states that when presented with two different things one after another, we will perceive them as more different than they actually are. Keep in mind that the difference does not need to be obviously large, slight distinctions are sufficient. Putting this principle into use, we can look at an example of a real estate agent. When showing interested people some houses or apartments, he would always present them with one or two estates that were in very bad condition. Of course, he kept those homes as showpieces and only the third house was meant to be sold in the first place. But due to the negative impressions on the previous places, the final suggestion seemed even more attractive to the prospective buyers.

Car dealers, who are masters of weapons of social influence, use the same principle. Most often they will present buyers of a new car with additional options after they negotiated the car's price, since the one-hundred dollars for a better radio or another upgrade seem less costly compared to the thousands of dollars the buyer spent on the car itself.

What is the principle of consistency?

As usual, the chapter starts out with an example: Canadian researchers (Knox & Inkster, 1968) that investigated people at horse racetracks found out that bettors were more confident in their horse's chances after they placed their bet. This illustrates our inherent desire to be consistent and marks another powerful tool of social influence. We will perceive both personal and interpersonal forces that will direct us towards behaving consistently with choices we made before. It is a matter of commitment to those choices. For another example, see the results of Regan's & Kilduff's (1988) study, which found voters to be more confident in the chances of their candidate just after they cast their ballots.

The principle of consistency is not new to psychology. Some of the first researchers in this field were Leon Festinger (1957), Fritz Heider (1946), and Theodore Newcomb (1953). All of them thought of the need for consistency as a core behavioral motivator.

By showing how sometimes the principle can lead us to action that clearly opposes our best interest, we can indicate the power of this weapon of social influence. Take this study for example, which was conducted on a New York City beach: researchers were interested in whether subjects in a theft situation would risk being harmed to stop the crime. Of course, the thefts were only staged by the experimenters but this was unknown to the subjects. The design included an assistant that would lay down his towel together with a portable radio just five feet away from the experimental subject. Shortly after the assistant left for the water, another assistant would pretend to steal the radio. Two conditions were tested, each with 20 participants. The first involved no actual manipulation: the researcher would leave his things and go for the water. When the thief appeared, only four of the involuntary participants tried to stop him. In the second condition, the assistant would ask the subject to "watch his things" while he was gone. Interestingly, the participants seemed to remain consistent with their verbal agreement and now 19 out of 20 people tried to fight of the thief, sometimes even aggressively.

What purpose does consistency serve?

As we have seen with reciprocity and commitments, the principle of consistency with one's commitments is valued by society. On the opposite, people who are inconsistent are often described as weak, confused, two-faced, or even ill.

Being a form of automatic responding, consistency serves most often as a shortcut which renders our complex lives easier. By the time we have made a choice, we can put thoughts about this decision aside and can concentrate on other things, saving us valuable mental capacities. However, shortcuts are not the only reason why we regularly employ the consistency principle. There is also our desire to push away some disturbing aspects of our social environment.

An example that illustrates this more complex behavior is a story about attending an introductory session for Transcendental Meditation. One of the two people attending was a logician. Since the technique was not based on any scientific ground, this friend had no problems to disprove the leader's explanations in front of the whole audience. Not being able to counter those arguments, the leader stopped his explanations altogether at one point . Certainly one would think that, since it was just disproved that the technique could work, the audience would have left and nobody would have signed up for the sessions. But the opposite reaction took place! When the two people later asked some of the others who instantly gave money to the leader to pay the first sessions just after the logician's argumentation, they found out that most of them had specific problems they sought solutions for. It became clear that all of them used the consistency principle not because they wanted to save themselves mental capacities, but because they did not want to think about any drawbacks, misconceptions, etc. that accompanied the Transcendental Meditation technique. They simply wanted to fulfill their needs so they quickly put down their money in order to let the consistency principle unfold its power by thinking something like "Of course I think meditation will show me a solution to my issues, I already spent my money on it".

Another way in which consistency is exploited by professionals concerns toy companies, especially before Christmas. In a first step, they heavily advertise one specific toy. Since children are strongly susceptible to TV ads they will probably "ask" their parents to get them this toy for Christmas and because parents often crack under the pressure of their persistent children, they promise to get this toy. In a next step, the companies under-supply stores with exactly this toy so it is quickly sold out. Of course, no parent wants to celebrate Christmas empty-handed, so they get another toy to substitute for the one they could not get. Shortly after the holidays, commercials start showing the previously promised toy again to draw the attention of the children back to it. Because they need to be consistent with their initial promise, parents now need to buy this toy as well, which is - "surprisingly" - in stock everywhere. With this technique, toy companies can cash twice.

Why is commitment essential?

The aspect of commitment has already been introduced and it answers the question of how the power of the consistency principle can be unleashed. It is only logical that a first step towards a pressure to behave consistently is to make (or to be manipulated to make) a commitment that sets the reference for further consistency.

There are several approaches that are used by professionals to get individuals to comply with their requests. One rather simple experiment by Steven Sherman (1980) for example tried to get individuals to collect money for the American Cancer Society (ACS). Initially, he asked participants to predict their own response to the question whether they would raise funds or not. Certainly, most people did not want to make the impression of being uncharitable and said they would agree if asked to do so. As a result, when one week later the ACS called them there was a 700% increase in volunteers. The same was found when people were asked whether they would vote on Election Day or not, a massive increase in turnout followed.

In the context of legal juries there is one woman, named Jo-Ellen Demetrius, who is known for her effective application of the commitment strategy. Simply by asking a juror whether he or she would withstand the pressure of the other jurors if he or she believed in the innocence of Demetrius’ client increased the likelihood that this person would live up to it.

Other professionals include telephone solicitors for charity whose initial flowery phrases do not exclusively serve the purpose of being polite and friendly. By asking “How are you today” for example they establish a basis for an upcoming commitment on the part of their victim. The majority of people will respond with phrases such as “Thank you, I’m fine” etc., few would mention negative feelings. But by assuring that one is good or fine, people committed themselves to this personal statement. As a next step, the solicitor would most often continue with something like “This is good to hear since I am calling on behalf of those who are less fortunate. Would you be willing to make a donation?”. A majority will find it difficult to respond with a rejection. For a more scientific proof let us consider the study of Daniel Howard (1990). Again, people were called and asked to let a member of the Hunger Relief Committee (HRC) come to their homes to sell cookies in order to raise money for the needy. Two conditions were tested. In the first, the telephone solicitor would simply ask the previously mentioned question alone. This led to a positive response in only 18% of the cases. In the second condition, the caller asked “How are you doing today?” before proceeding to the request. The findings indicated that first of all, as expected, a majority gave a positive answer to the question on their current condition (e.g. “good”, “fine” etc.). Second of all, compliance nearly doubled (around 32%) because the victims were bound to their commitment. Third of all, of those who let a member of the HRC come to their homes, 89% lived up to their commitment and bought cookies.

Those previous examples show how a special group of professionals make use of our desire to be perceived as consistent. However, there are less innocent possibilities to but this principle to use. One of these is extensively illustrated in this chapter. It concerns the Chinese prisoner-of-war camps that many American soldiers were kept in during the Korean War. What seemed striking from an outside perspective was the relatively non-aggressive atmosphere of these camps. Compared to the North Koreans, China used less punishment and was therefore attributed with a lenient policy towards prisoners. However, when having a closer look at those camps it became clear that this lenient policy was extremely effective from a psychological point of view. Several aspects and the influence of the commitment and consistency principle on this effectiveness shall be considered.

First of all, the Chinese were masters of having captives to inform on one another. In case of an attempt for example, it was easy for them to get information about the escapee and his hideout just by providing those with a bag of rice who would turn him in. Second of all, they managed to build up commitment towards the communist idea within their captives. In order to avoid seeming too obvious, they did so by starting out small and increasing the power. For example, they frequently asked prisoners to make very mild anti-American (or pro-Communist) statements. They were so mild that they seemed completely innocent. Subsequently, those statements were gently pushed to become more extreme and had to be signed by the prisoners. Sometimes they even had to be recited in in-camp discussion groups. Having put his name on it without any appearance of violence on the part of the Chinese a soldier would soon impersonate what he had written and change his self-image accordingly. Furthermore, the Communists could use the statements and the soldier’s name to broadcast anti-American propaganda via radio and other means.

The strategy the Chinese employed is still used today, especially in a commercial context. Starting out small and proceeding to increasingly bigger requests is termed the foot-in-the-door technique. Its effectiveness was first studied in 1966 by Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser. Their studied consisted of two conditions; in the first they asked a sample of homeowners if they were willing to install a billboard, advertising driver safety, in their front lawns. They were shown a photograph of a house with an enormous billboard that clearly obstructed the view. Understandably, only 17% agreed to have something so hideous in their front lawns. In the second condition, this procedure was preceded with another researcher that first asked the sample of homeowners if they would agree to have a small sign (also advertising driver safety) put up in their garden. Nearly 100% complied, not knowing that they committed themselves to the idea of driver safety. When two weeks later they were asked the same question as the people in the first condition, 76% agreed to have the extremely big sign put up in their lawn.

Furthermore, Freedman and Fraser wanted to investigate whether the initial small and the subsequent bigger request needed to be related. To do so, they used the same approach. But instead of asking to install the small sign they requested the new sample of homeowners to sign a petition to “keep California beautiful”. Interestingly, around 50% of the people who signed this petition agreed to have the big billboard put up in front of their homes. Obviously, those homeowners had altered the perception they had of themselves towards a more publicly spirited citizen.

How do commitments affect self-image?

Although the alteration of self-images is one of the core reasons why commitments work and can be exploited, it is necessary to state that not all commitments lead to this result. It is therefore helpful to examine the factors that determine such a change in self-perception. Generally, four factors have been identified. To make commitment effective, it should be: active, public, effortful, and freely chosen. All of those factors will now be considered more deeply.

Beginning with the active part of why commitments are so powerful, it is helpful to highlight one aspect of human behavior: to gain information about our environment and ourselves, we look at the actions of others as well as at our own deeds. In this context, active vs. passive commitments were studied for their impact on our self-concepts. Consider one study that manipulated whether commitments were made actively or passively. One group of students actively decided to participate in an AIDS education project by signing up, the other group of students did so passively by failing to sign out. When a few days the project was about to start, 74% of the volunteers came from the group that actively committed themselves to the project. Additionally, those students were more likely to attribute their participation to their personal values and beliefs.

The Chinese wardens in the POW camps knew about the effect of active involvement as well. They made prisoners write their statements down and in case of refusal asked kindly to copy a pro-Communist statement from a notebook. To the captive, the copying seemed harmless but as mentioned, the wards knew about its impact.

Besides from the obvious advantage that written expressions could serve as physical evidence for a prisoner’s compliance, it could also be used to convince others. One further aspect was helpful to the Chinese in this circumstance: it has been shown that people believe written statements even though they know that the author was forced to write them.

What is more, we draw information on ourselves from what other people think about us. This leads to a strong pressure to be consistent with commitments, both from our own need to align our self-image with our actions and from the outside by conforming to what others think about us.

Prisoners of war in the Chinese camps knew that letters to their families were scanned by the wards and therefore tried to increase the chances of having them delivered by adding pro-Communist statements. By this, the men did not only commit themselves to the anti-American ideas again, but they also spread propaganda about kind treatment outside the walls of the camps. Another strategy involved contests of political essays that were held periodically among the prisoners. By providing very small prizes that were nevertheless scarce (e.g. fruit, cigarettes etc.), the Chinese maintained high responses to these contests. Being psychologically skilled, they knew that they could not interest their captives in participation if these knew that they had to take a generally favorable stance on communism in order to win. Therefore, there was the occasional pro-American essay that won the contest which assured steady participation.

A previously mentioned corporation, Amway, also uses the strategy of written commitments to enhance their economic performance. They have their employees formulate written sales goals they want to achieve. Other companies that were formerly faced with the so called “cooling-off” laws (legally granting customers the right to cancel a sale within a specific time period) invented a trick to bypass those regulations: when it is time to sign the sales agreement, they have the customer fill out the form, establishing a personal commitment to the purchase. Other strategies that use the power of active, written expressions are so called testimonial contests in which customers are asked to write a few words about the company’s product (of course starting out with “I like the product because…”) in order to win a prize.

Another important aspect of the power of commitments concerns their public availability. Clearly, if a personal statement that is accessible to everyone or at least to a group of important others, is a lasting reminder of our own commitment to something, resulting in a need to remain consistent with it. This is another factor of the importance of written political statements in POW camps. A famous study that investigated this power was conducted by Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955). Participants in this experiment were divided into three groups, each had the same core task: estimating the length of presented lines in their minds. The first group had to write down their estimate and sign it (public commitment); people in the second group wrote down their estimate on a Magic Writing Pad and erased it immediately. Participants in group three did not commit themselves at all. What was then investigated was the likelihood of each group to insist on their first judgment when they were presented with evidence that those initial estimates were wrong. Not surprisingly, those who did not note down anything (group three) were the ones most likely to deviate from their initial estimations. Significantly less deviation was observed in group two, even more in group one, within those that publicly committed themselves to their initial choices. These findings can be translated to a case in which this sort of stubbornness is rather ineffective: it has been found that hung juries (meaning an instance in which a jury cannot agree upon consent) are more likely if the jurors have to vote by raising their hands, rather than casting a ballot.

The reason is that jurors that once publicly committed themselves to a choice are unlikely to change it, even upon being presented with new information. Another application of the public commitment principle can be found in clinics that promote weight loss: clients are asked to write down personal weight-loss goals and show these to as many relatives and friends as possible.

The next aspect of the power of commitments concerns effort. It seems logical that with increasing effort one puts into a position, the influence of this position on the individual expressing it increases as well. This is the reason why concert promoters often hide the price for their events. They found out that after fans made the effort to call for information, they are more likely to purchase tickets. Another, rather extreme example tells of the Thonga, a tribe in southern Africa: before being accepted into the ranks of the men, the Thonga boys need to endure a time of cruel rites. They are beaten, undressed, their hair is cut, their foreskin is cut off, and then they are left alone in what is called the “garden of mysteries” for three months. During this period, they experience beatings, cold, thirst, disgusting food, punishment, and the threat of death. When trying to escape they are beaten and threatened. What seems like a cruel lifestyle of native African tribes can easily be transferred to our western society: initiation ceremonies of fraternities. Newspaper analyses reveal that there is a striking similarity to the six trials that need to be passed by the Thonga. And just as the native tribe, fraternities make sure that their initiation rites will not die, even in the light of several deaths related to those practices. The question is: why are these practices carried on and on? Personality tests revealed no deviations from normal traits in members of school fraternities, abandoning the concept that these people are mentally ill or sadistic. Furthermore, besides the violent initiation rites, most fraternities participate in social projects. Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills (1959) presented evidence that hinted at something else: they showed that women who had to overcome a harsh initiation ritual (embarrassment and electric shocks led to the same results) in order to become a member of a discussion group viewed their fellow members as more interesting and the discussions as more valuable than those who did not have to put any effort into becoming a member. This was even the case when the two researches asked (unbeknownst to the experimental subjects) the other group members to present themselves as uninteresting as possible.

Together with an analysis of 54 tribes which showed that those who had the harshest initiation rituals also had the highest sense of solidarity, the results illustrate that one important reason why such rites refuse to die is their positive impact on group cohesion.

Other institutions that use this power are military boot camps for example.

The last aspect that influences the effectiveness of commitments concerns the free choice to commit. Actually, this last point is as predictive of the principle's functionality as all three previously mentioned factors combined. The underlying mechanism shall be examined by investigating two puzzling questions. The first concerns the school fraternities' reluctance to employ community projects into their initiation weeks. If it were simply for the horrible experience there would be enough distasteful duties in the social area (e.g. emptying bed pans at retirement homes). Furthermore, negative associations with fraternities would be diminished. The second question brings us back to the Chinese POW camps. Given the good accessibility of highly valuable prizes, why did the warden not provide things as warm clothes for example to those who won the political essay contests? Both questions lead to the same answer. Fraternities as well as Chinese officials wanted their captives to find no alternative explanations (or even excuses) for their actions other than their commitment. If a prospective member of a fraternity participated in some gruesome bed-pan-emptying, he could have attributed his compliance to his charitable personality, whereas the prisoner could have argued that he had informed on one of his fellow inmates because of a highly valuable prize. Due to the absence of strong external pressure, both parties were made internally responsible for their behaviors.

The aspect of external pressure has its implications on child rearing as well. Studies suggest that threats (i.e. "Don't do this or you will be punished!") or bribes (i.e. "If you do this, you will get a candy bar!") may lead to short-term compliance with a rule but not to a long-lasting commitment. One of these studies was conducted by Jonathan Freedman (1965). The initial question was, whether the simple request not to play with an extremely interesting toy was followed six weeks after this request was made. Two conditions were tested in a room with five toys, one of which was highly interesting, the other four rather dull. In the first condition, the researcher told the boy that he was not allowed to play with the interesting toy and that he would be punished if he did. When the researcher left, the boy was observed secretly. 21 out of 22 did not touch the toy at all. In the second condition, the procedure was the same except there was no threat. The researcher merely stated that it would be wrong to play with the interesting toy. Again, only one of the 22 boys broke the rule. Interestingly, when both samples were given the option to play with the same set of five toys, almost all of the boys (around 77%) from the threat-condition seized this opportunity but only 33% from the other condition did so. What is more, self-perceptions had changed: the children in the sample that involved no threat stated that they did not play with the toy because they did not want to.

What are some further aspects of commitment?

Changes in our inner beliefs about ourselves and our environment are especially valued by professionals who are eager to exploit the power of the commitment principle. Reasons for their appreciation include the fact that such a change is lasting and not situation-specific. This means that just one inner change applies to a broader context than the one in which it first occurred. Furthermore, by changing our self-concepts we subsequently generate other reasons for our commitments, even in cases in which the initial reason (given by the exploitative professional) is long gone.

Again, car dealers nicely illustrate how this works. They apply a technique which known as throwing a low-ball, meaning to first offer a very good deal (e.g. a below-market price or certain extras). However, the dealer is merely interested in the customer’s commitment to buying a car and never intends to live up to the deal in the end. Of course, this is preciously wrapped in such excuses as “I am sorry, I made a calculation error” or “My boss says the deal I offered is impossible.”. Meanwhile, the customer has already made a commitment to the purchase and developed new reasons (i.e. “Other dealers won’t be cheaper either and I want this car.”). Some might even feel embarrassed and guilty because they initially accepted the price that was supposedly too low.

A study conducted showed that it was also possible to initially offer a good deal and later on add a negative aspect, instead of removing the positive in the first place. To do so, they asked one sample of students if they were willing to help with a study that required getting up at 7 A.M.. Only 24% of those agreed. However, when they asked another sample about their participation first (56% agreed) and informing them of the early beginning only afterwards, a full 95% showed up to participate. Certainly, this effect can be applied to serve the public good: researchers found out that asking people to save energy and lower their fuel consumption did not lead to more positive ecological balance sheets one month later. But using commitment and the low-ball technique, this changed: another sample was first offered a cheering publication of their names in the local newspaper, given that they would save a certain amount of energy within a month. Later on, these families received information that – unfortunately – it was not possible to publish their names for no obvious reason. One could think that these families would then step back to their old, more consumptive behavior, but the findings showed the opposite. They consumed even less than they had when they still thought their names would be made public! As the commitment principle would predict, these families’ self-perceptions shifted towards a more ecologically responsible image. A reason for why the savings were even higher when the initial incentive was removed could be related to what we have already seen with fraternities and POW camps: they could no longer simply attribute their behavior to a public interest.

How can exploitation of these techniques be prevented?

As with all principles discussed in the book, commitment and consistency are not generally maladaptive, on the contrary: as mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, they serve certain goals. Being aware of this fact is a first step in defending against professionals who want to use these principles as weapons of influence. Generally, there are two types of signs that indicate whether we made (or are in the process of making) a poor choice. First of all, there are stomach signs. The peculiar feeling we perceive when we have obviously been tricked into doing something we do not want is easily recognizable. However, these signs often occur when it is too late or when the professional’s exerted force is too obvious. Heart-of-Hearts signs make up the other type. They are harder to perceive and even harder to conceptualize. Yet, what has been found is that we often perceive our feelings concerning something milliseconds before we are aware of them.

Paying close attention to these signs from the Heart-of-hearts can provide us with a pure and unaffected image of our initial feeling toward something. A simple question might help in those instances: “If I had the possibility to go back in time with the knowledge I have now, would I still make the same choice?”.

What are about groups with heightened susceptibility?

There are certain factors that determine the vulnerability to fall victim to the commitment and consistency principle. This is illustrated by an example of a 65-year old golf-pro named Jack Nicklaus. Just after his grandson died in a bathtub, he announced that he would resign from his sport to spent time with his family. However, on the same day of this announcement he played a charity match and gave a speech in a golf club. When confronted with his inconsistency he replied that these dates were fixed long before the tragic incident and that he had to live up to the promises he made, even in light of the devastating situation. This strong stance toward his own commitment is attributed to his age and his origin (he was American). First of all, he found that the preference for the feeling of being consistent increases with age and reaches its peak around the age of 50, after this it remains stable on this level. Furthermore, old people were found to be more susceptible to the foot-in-the-door or the low-ball technique. Second of all, Nicklaus came from Ohio in which the American virtue of individualism is extremely perpetuated. Individualistic countries place more emphasis on the self, in contrast to more collectivist nations who refer more to the group. Consequently, they make choices depending on their own histories and statements, leaving them more vulnerable to principles and professionals who exploit those statements or behaviors. To undermine this with some scientific results, a foot-in-the-door study was conducted that asked a sample of both American and Asian students to complete a 20-minute survey. One month later, when the same students were asked to fill out a 40-minute survey, 21.6% of the American but only 9.9% of the Asian students agreed.

How does the Tupperware party exemplify the importance of likability?

It should come as no surprise that another social rule states that we are more likely to comply with a request if the requester is somebody we like and know. However, this rule is often exploited by professionals we are hardly familiar with and who we would certainly dislike if we were to know about their tricks. The best example to start with is the Tupperware party, which includes several other compliance techniques that we encountered in previous chapters: reciprocity, by beginning with a game in which every contestant wins a prize in the end; commitment, by having each member of the party describe the advantages of the products they already have at home; social proof, resulting from the behavior within the group (everybody buys, so it must be appropriate to do so).

Although certainly helpful, these factors don’t account for the real power of the Tupperware party, which comes from the rule of liking. The company’s trick is the setting, since the parties are always held by one friend of the group which is granted a percentage of each purchase at the event. Therefore, the customers have the feeling of buying the products not from a stranger, but from someone they know and like: the person who has arranged for the party. As Franzen and Davis (1990) have shown, this social bond is so strong that it is twice as likely to determine the purchase of a product as the customer’s preference for the object itself. Interestingly, the Tupperware company has expanded (a party is estimated to start every 2.7 seconds) and long entered the market in societies like Europe, Latin America, and Asia, which rely more on an individual’s place in a social network than in the USA. Consequently, less than 25% of the company’s sales now come from North America.

Similarly to the findings on social proof, the customers are well aware of the pressure resulting from the liking rule. Furthermore, the presence of the friend is not even necessary to elicit the desired behavior, mentioning the name is often sufficient. This is why the Shaklee Corporation (door-to-door sales) uses an endless-chain method to generate new sales: if a customer likes a product, he or she can be asked for the names of family members or friends who could be interested as well. Asking these new customers to buy the Shaklee products and to provide a list with friends generates an endless chain of potential sales.

Of course, in some instances this technique is not applicable. In these cases, professionals can try to press for compliance by getting the customer to like them. Several reliable factors have been identified that cause liking.

What are some factors that cause likability?

One of the most obvious factors is physical attractiveness. It is a widely known fact that beautiful people are often treated superior; however, the power of this aspect is its automaticity. People tend to be unaware of the impact that attractiveness has on their behavior. A good example for this is the so called halo effect, stating that only one positive characteristic (in this case physical attractiveness) determines the way a person is perceived by others (i.e. it dominates the perception). Studies (e.g. Langlois et al., 2000) have shown that, as a result of the halo effect, we automatically attribute such positive traits as honesty, intelligence, talent, and kindness to people we see as good-looking. This even has an effect on politics, as elections for Canadian federal statesmen show: > 2.5 more votes were cast for attractive candidates than for their unattractive competitors. The same findings can be applied to other settings: employment, where good-looking employees earn 12% to 14% more than their less beautiful counterparts; the legal system, where the likelihood of avoiding jail sentences was twice as high for attractive defendants than for unattractive ones. Furthermore, being good-looking increases the chance of receiving help when needed and to change other’s opinions. Interestingly, both males and females were prone to this influence, even when applied to their members of their own sex. Logically, this rule is out of effect when it comes to competitions (e.g. in the context of romantic relationships). What is more, even the attractiveness of children seems to influence us. Adults have been shown to rate an act of aggression as less severe when it was inflicted by an attractive child (see Dion, 1972) and good-looking pupils are perceived as more intelligent by teachers than their less pretty classmates (Ritts, Patterson, & Tubbs, 1992).

Another factor that causes liking is similarity, especially in the sense of opinions, personality traits, background, and lifestyle. The way we dress determines whether we  will receive help for example. Emswiller, Deaux, & Willits (1971) showed that experimenters dressing in a “hippie” fashion received the dime they asked for in more than 2/3 of the cases than when they asked a more conventionally dressed person (less than 1/2 of cases when not  conventionally dressed). The same was true for another condition that used “straight” fashion. In a same way, car dealers look for evidence of a potential customer’s background to claim they are like them. Furthermore, analyses of insurance contracts have shown that customers were more likely to purchase insurance from a salesperson that was similar to them concerning age, religion, political position, and smoking habits. Other more bizarre results have shown that changing the name of a survey-requester to match those of the survey-takers resulted in compliance that was twice as high. Even when having to choose which life to save, people are susceptible to the influence of artificially generated similarity. Furnham (1996) published results indicating that participants who were asked to rank people with kidney disorders on a waiting list for treatment chose those who matched their own preference for political parties.

One other factor that shouldn’t be very surprising is compliments. People tend to like those people more that appear to fancy them. Certainly, there are limitations to our credulity (e.g. when we can be very certain that the compliment is just a means to an end), but we generally believe that praises and compliments are genuine. An illustration of this fact is given by one study that involved a sample of men that were requested by another person to provide a small favor. Three conditions were tested: in the first, the men received exclusively positive comments about themselves, in the second they received exclusively negative comments, and in the third comments were mixed (Drachman, deCarufel, & Insko, 1978). The findings indicated that the men liked those requesters the most who gave only compliments. This was even true in those cases in which the participants were well aware that the requester wanted to gain something from their liking him. Furthermore, only in the exclusively positive condition it didn’t matter whether the stated compliments were correct or not, they produced identical amounts of liking.

The last factor that determines if we like somebody or something is contact and cooperation. People like what is familiar to them. To illustrate this, an experiment can be conducted by everyone at home: it involves taking a picture of oneself and printing the original as well as a reverse image (i.e. left and right side interchanged). When both pictures are shown to a friend who is asked to pick his favorite, he or she will likely choose the original, whereas the person on the picture will prefer the interchanged version. This results from the fact that both will decide on the picture that is most familiar to them. Since we see our own face most often in the mirror, the reverse image will seem more familiar and therefore more likable. Familiarity also accounts for an interesting election for attorney-general in Ohio in which a candidate, whose chances were expected to be very slim, made the race. The reason was that shortly before Election Day he changed his last name to something that had more political tradition in the state: Brown. This shows that we often unconsciously employ the rule of contact. Advertisers have found a way to use this principle in a very unobtrusive way. It has been shown that banner ads for a product (e.g. a camera) flashed in internet browsers five or twenty times produced more liking within the people who were browsing, although they did not consciously experience the flashing images.

Due to these findings, some professionals have advised to use a contact approach to improve race relations. They argued that more contact would lead to more familiarity among races and subsequently increase liking and decrease violence. However, school professionals have encountered the opposite pattern: increased mutual exposure will also increase prejudice between black and white students. A reason for this is that repeated contact doesn’t lead to increased liking when the contact is continuously experienced under negative conditions. One of these conditions is competition. Since schools employ a high degree of competition, exposure is likely to be perceived as negative. However, there are more advantages to the removal of segregation than there are disadvantages. Minorities’ performance levels for example are 10 times more likely to increase after desegregation. Consequently, education professionals developed a concept of cooperative learning to reduce competition to a healthier level.

What is cooperative learning?

The basis for the cooperative approach lies in research on intergroup conflict by Muzafer Sharif and his colleagues (1961). As a setting they chose a boy’s summer camp. What they found was that it didn’t need much to generate conflict between the kids. They simply divided them into two groups, each with their own residence cabin and each with a unique name (e.g. Eagles and Rattlers). Quickly after this separation, the groups started to degrade the rivals’ qualities and accomplishments. Treasure hunts and similar games that were performed in a cabin-against-cabin manner led to confrontations, name calling, and even raids of the rival cabin and stealing and burning of their banners, including written threats. Overwhelmed by the open hostility, the researchers quickly tried to undo their creation. In a first attempt, they employed the contact principle. But even under pleasant conditions like picnics and entertainment programs, food fights, and shouting, and aggression prevailed. The second attempt was strikingly simple and effective: Sharif and his colleagues generated some situation in which competition would have been harmful to both groups (e.g. interruption of camp’s water supply, a truck with food that was stuck and impossibly to be freed by only one group). The need for cooperation led to a fast abandonment of previous rivalry and both groups worked harmoniously to achieve their common goals. Friendships among members of different groups began to form and former aggression was completely extinguished.

To apply these findings to the former problem in schools, some specialists developed the jigsaw classroom. This approach requires cooperation among students in order to work through all the material that is to be tested in the end. Teams are formed and each member of the group receives a different part of the complete material (i.e. one piece of the puzzle). Consequently, pupils will need to help each other to perform best in the final examination. As a result, significantly more friendships were formed and less prejudice was observed. Furthermore, minority students’ scores, their self-esteem, and liking of the school increased, making them perform at least as good as their white classmates.

A different setting that makes use of the effects of common goals on liking is the police station. An approach that is termed Good Cop/Bad Cop is still used not only in American TV shows. When questioning a suspect, the person playing Bad Cop would first aggressively try to get the person to commit to the alleged crime. After some time of intimidation, Good Cop would start to try to calm down Bad Cop, ultimately giving him a coin and asking him to leave the room to get some coffee for everyone. Now alone with the suspect, he assures that he will put in a good word to the district attorney if he or she will make a confession. Subsequently, he will maintain that if they both work together, the sentence might be milder. Due to the contrast principle, Good Cop will be perceived as even more likable compared to Bad Cop and since he even spent his own money for coffee, the rule for reciprocity asks for a favor in return. Ultimately, instilling the common goal of working together towards a milder punishment will likely increase the likelihood for a confession.

What is the relation between association and conditioning?

It is a fact that people tend to dislike those who bring them unpleasant news, no matter whether this person caused the unpleasant information or not. Simply associating the informant with the news is enough. Reversely, the same is true for positive information. The foundation for this rule seems to lie in our upbringing: parents telling us not to play with the bad kids in the neighborhood, for example. It didn’t matter whether we did something bad ourselves, simply playing with the bad children would lead the other people from the neighborhood to associate us with bad news. That this perception is true was shown by some studies showing that people assume we share the personality traits of our friends.

Professionals who want to exploit the mechanism for their purposes are more likely to use the aspect of positive association. This is why attractive models almost always accompany advertisements for cars. Marketers want customers to associate beauty and desirability to their products. Results from one study support the effectiveness of such an approach. Cars were rated as faster, more expensive, and better designed when an attractive female model appeared in the commercial as opposed to another ad that showed the car alone (Smith & Engel, 1968). Interestingly, all participants denied the model’s influence on their ratings.

Other studies have observed the use of credit cards to investigate the rule of liking. First of all, it should be noted that credit cards allow for the spending of money without immediately paying. Therefore they are certainly stronger associated with positive aspects of shopping rather than with negative aspects of paying. Consequently, their specific logos, insignias, and signs should be attributed to the same positive feelings. Indeed, studies have found that larger tips were given at restaurants when customers paid with a credit card. Furthermore, students who browsed a catalog in a room with MasterCard symbols spent 29% more money for orders than did those who sat in a plain room, even though they did not consciously perceive the symbols. The same finding was applicable to a setting in which students were asked to donate for charity. 87% agreed when MasterCard symbols were present, only 33% did so when the room contained no signs.

Other applications include SALE signs which have been shown to increase customers’ spending even when they actually don’t save any money. The simple association SALE=bargain was enough. Furthermore, celebrity testimonials are used for the same reason, since their fame and other positive characteristics are automatically attributed to the product.

What are some examples of often-used acts of association?

When confronted with difficult legislative procedures, there is a tradition in the White House to convince skeptic legislators of the President’s position during a meal. Similarly, fundraising speeches are almost always held after a dinner. First of all, this engages the reciprocity rule. However, as Gregory Razran (1938) states in his papers on the luncheon technique, people increasingly like people while they are eating. This happens unconsciously and the technique is obviously still applied today. Interestingly, these findings seem related to the animal studies that were conducted by Ivan Pavlov. This is less surprising in light of the fact that Razran was one of the first who translated Pavlov’s papers to English.

The original studies were conducted on dogs and Pavlov managed to create an association between the dogs’ normal reaction to food, which is salivation, and an irrelevant stimulus, in this case a bell. By repeated exposure to food that was accompanied by the ring of a bell, the dog at some point started to produce saliva only by hearing the bell. Applied to the setting of the White House and the fundraising dinners, Razran stated that except for the increase in saliva, food elicits other responses as well, a good feeling for example. This could be associated to political statements just by serving a good meal.

Going back to the initial aspect of the principle of association, people are not generally unaware of the consequences. The fact that positive and negative news are attributed to the person delivering them leads to certain behavioral aspects. In one study by Rosen and Tesser (1970), subjects were asked to inform another participant about a phone call. 50% of the time the call brought good news, 50% of the time they were bad. In the first 50%, the informants always mentioned the good aspect of the call; however, in the other 50% they simply told the subject that there was a call waiting for them, avoiding to mention the negative aspect. Certainly, people are at least unconsciously aware of the fact that people will attribute to them the quality of the information they bring.

One area in which it is often the case that people link positive events to them while at the same time avoid a personal relation to negative events is sports. There are several aspects of sports that seem puzzling. Riots after the defeat of a favorite football team indicate that it is not merely a game to some people. Also, the presents some professional athletes receive from their fans seem irrational in light of their wealth. Obviously, there is a personal relationship between individuals and their teams or their favorite athletes. Another example is the story of a soldier from the second world war who stopped speaking after returning home to the Balkans when the war ended. As a result, he was put in a veteran's hospital and remained there till he died. However, after years of isolation, the radio in his room broadcasted a soccer match between the team of his hometown and a local rival. When the referee indicated a foul on the part of the soldier's favorite team, he shouted at the radio, giving vent to his anger. After this, he remained silent until the end.

This story shows that the relationship sports fans have with their team is both strong and personal. The fans attribute what is happening to the team to themselves. A defeat of the team is a defeat of oneself; the same is true for victories. The reason for this is the principle of association (in the case of the soldier the crucial element is his birthplace). However, as mentioned previously, people tend to claim responsibility for victories but distance themselves from defeats, due to a need to be perceived as successful as possible. An interesting finding shows that one of the most general ways we manage to do this is by using different pronouns. Imagine the fans of a team that just won a match, if interviewed they will most likely say such things as "We won the match!", or "We are in first place!". Few will state something like "They (the team) won!", or "They are in first place!". Faced with a defeat on the other hand, fans are unlikely to say "We lost." or "We are in the last place.". Rather they will attribute the loss to the team, distancing themselves from the loss and even showing open disappointment such as "They lost and destroyed our chances of making it to the finals!".

These findings are not exclusively applicable to sports arenas, one study investigating homeowners in Belgium after general elections and how long it would take them to remove the signs in their front gardens, indicating their favorite political party. The researchers found a positive relationship between election results and the time the homeowners left the sign up (Boen et al., 2002).

It is suggested that there are some people who are more excessive in the described behavior than others (e.g. groupies who trade sexual favors for the possibility to brag about knowing a star). These people tend to have poor self-worth and they use the association principle to inflate their low self-esteem. Another group of people who use the principle for this reason employ a different approach. Instead of strengthening the association between them and a desirable (famous) person, they make somebody who is already visibly related to them look more desirable. The clearest example for this group is the so called "stage mother". By making her child more appreciated by others, she often inflates her own self-worth.

How can exploitation be prevented?

A general approach is advised when defending against professionals who employ the principles associated with liking for their purposes. Instead of focusing on the things that elicit our liking of the exploiters or the products they promote, we should merely concentrate on the fact that inadequate liking has been produced. Whenever we like the professional more than we should, given the specific circumstances, we should be alarmed. In this case, we have to separate the alleged exploiter from the product he advertises. Concentrating exclusively on the advantages and disadvantages of the prospective purchase, we should be able to make a more independent decision.

What are some examples of how the principle of scarcity is used in everyday life?

A personal story of the author is a good example of the principle of scarcity. When he learned that a Mormon temple in his hometown was open for public visitors for only a few days, he felt the immediate need to participate in a guided tour, even though he never cared for the Mormon religion or for church architecture in general. The crucial point was that normally non-Mormons are denied access to the temples and even members of the group are not allowed to see the very inner part of the church unless they are in a very high clerical position. This introduces the effect that scarcity has on our behavior and our perception. Something that was of no particular value in the beginning became highly desirable when its accessibility was of short durability. Another example is an experiment from the University of Florida, where students had to rate the quality of their cafeteria. Similar to findings from other university cafeterias, Florida State students were unsatisfied with the quality of the food. However, when they had to rate again after being told that they could not eat at the cafeteria for two weeks due to a fire, evaluations significantly changed for the better, even though the food had not changed.

This way of assessing the quality of something is the most common rule applied by collectors: the rarer an item is, the higher its value. This is especially true for so called “precious mistakes”, items with flaws that therefore deviate from the norm but at the same time hold extremely high value for collectors (e.g. blurred stamps or double-struck coins). The power of scarcity can not only be found in these rather materialistic settings, but also in social interactions. The author provides an example of an incoming phone call during a very interesting face-to-face conversation. He states that he will be very likely to disrupt the talk, no matter how important, to take the call since there is the possibility that the caller might not phone back and therefore the information he or she could provide will be lost. This anecdote leads to the finding that people are generally more motivated by potential losses than potential gains. For example, in the context of a romantic relationship or grade point averages, most college students have been shown to recall stronger emotions when imagining losses than gains. This has further implications on other areas of society. Take our health system, which covers a highly important aspect of our lives: well being. Advertisements for breast-cancer self-examinations have been shown to be more effective when the incorporated potential losses (i.e. of health) than gains. This fact seems to stem from our brain structure and its mechanisms, since it is more difficult to disturb decision-making processes in the context of losses as opposed to those involving gains.

Another way of applying the power of scarcity in a professional setting uses limited numbers. Frequently, sales managers will inform potential customers of limited supplies for one product and that a constant availability cannot be guaranteed. A similar technique focuses more on the temporal availability of an item, rather than its restricted quantity. This deadline technique limits access to the product or service for an officially specified time. This approach can even elicit interest in people who never experienced the need to buy the item in question before. It can be used in a more extreme way that is often applied by face-to-face salespeople. They use the time limit “right now”, letting the potential customer know that after the very moment of their conversation, future possibilities to acquire the product or service becomes more unlikely or that the (good) deal they offer is only valid now. The effect of this tactic is that potential clients are deprived of the time to engage in a conscious, efficient analysis of the deal’s pros and cons.

What is the Principle of psychological reactance?

The scarcity principle draws its power from two sources: first, like the other principles discussed in the book, it offers shortcuts. Generally the assumption that what is rare is better holds true; it is an effective way to assess the quality of something we are unfamiliar with. For the second source, psychological reactance theory (developed by Jack Brehm) comes into play. It states that whenever people are deprived of their freedom (i.e. to make free-choices), they will react against this by wanting this freedom more than before. Since scarcity puts a limit to our freedom to choose what we want, we will respond with an increased need for the choice. Researchers subsequently tried to determine the age at which people develop the drive to react against limitations to freedom. It has been shown that children at the age of two first engage in reactive behavior. This is why many parents describe this period as the “terrible twos”. It is marked by relatively more contrary behavior and resistance to outside pressure (especially from their parents). One study had a sample of two year old boys placed in a room with two toys. In one condition, both toys were equally accessible, only one was placed behind a one foot high piece of Plexiglas (still easily touchable by a child of that age). In the other condition, the Plexiglas was two feet high and it was therefore not possible to reach the toy without crawling behind the glass. The results showed that both toys were equally quickly touched in the first condition. However, in the second, restricted design, the boys crawled behind the barrier and touched the less easily reachable toy three times more quickly than the other. The reason for the development of such reactance at the age of two has been related to child development. This specific age marks the time when babies first recognize themselves as individuals, resulting into a basic concept of autonomy. In the light of this approach, reactance seems like a mean to gather information. Children are testing their limitations concerning freedom.

Another time in a person’s life that is characterized by rebellion against restriction of freedom is the teenage years. Similar to the terrible twos, teenagers develop and increased sense of individuality and autonomy. Traditional authority on the part of the parents is therefore often counterproductive. One intriguing effect that can result is termed “Romeo and Juliet effect”. It refers to the impact of parental interventions on romantic relationships and the resulting psychological reactance in their teenage children. One study conducted by Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz (1972) has shown that teenage couples react to their parents interference in their relationship in an interesting way: the couples that suffered from their parents missing acceptance of their relationship reported some problems more often than other couples (e.g. more critical view of the partner, report of more negative behaviors in the partner). However, like Romeo and Juliet, these couples also reported more love for each other and a higher desire to get married. Even more surprising, when during the progression of the study the parents’ interference became more intense, the reported love increased as well. Similarly, when parental interference was reduced, so did the feelings for each other.

The previous examples show extreme instances in our development of reactive feelings and behaviors. As adults, these feelings tend to be quieter and covered. Take for example the case of the now well-known town of Kennesaw in Georgia. It became famous for one specific law that was enacted by officials without considering much of the inhabitants’ opinions. It required every adult to own a gun and ammunition. Being a clear restriction to the peoples’ freedom to choose whether they wanted to own a weapon or not, psychological reactance was expected by experts to be very likely. Surprisingly, gun sales rose to an all-time high, leading defenders of psychological reactance theory to investigate deeper.

The quickly discovered the reason for the increase in sales: it was not the population of Kennesaw who obeyed the newly enacted law but rather people from other cities who – attracted by the publicity – bought gun after gun in the local shops. Similar effects were observed when officials of Dade County, Miami, banned the use of phosphates (i.e. certain laundry or cleaning products etc.). As it was predicted by the theory, inhabitants reacted to the limitation of their freedom, in this case by smuggling and hoarding (some people horded supplies that would last for 20 years). What is more and especially more interesting: the consumers perceived the phosphate products as better compared to people from counties in which phosphate was not banned, in terms of gentleness, efficacy, and even better to pour. This effect results from the fact that what we perceive is simply an increased desire to own these products. Unable to make sense of this, we ascribe more positive characteristics to those things we are deprived of.

Psychological reactance also extends to those areas that are less tangible: information for example. Censorship of certain information not only makes us want this information even more, it also leads to a more favorable position toward that information. When students were told that a speech opposing mixed (male/female) dorms was banned, they became more opposed to mixed dorms themselves, even without ever listening to the arguments. Certainly, this bears another dangerous possibility: shady political parties could for example use this effect for their advantage, by making sure their unpopular positions and speeches are banned and then informing the public about this censorship. The same accounts for overly prudent parents who try to ban sexually oriented material from schoolbooks or hygiene texts. They should think twice about their resolute approach, since it will likely lead their children to want the material even more. To provide evidence for this assumption, researchers had students read ads for a book, either containing the information that it was age restricted (age 21) or no information at all. As expected, the restriction led the students to rate the book as more desirable.

Official censorship is most often encountered in the context of banned political or sexual material. However, another situation can be described with this term. It involves the context of jury trials. In some cases, a piece of evidence is presented to the jury and later on decided to violate certain requirements and is therefore officially banned by the judge, who in this case acts as some kind of censor. As a result, the jury is asked (and actually often not allowed) not to include this piece of evidence in their evaluation when rendering their judgment. Yet, most jury members will feel a right to consider every piece of information, especially since it has already been presented to them. Consequently, jurors often use exactly this piece of evidence to a greater extent (Liebermann & Arndt, 2000).

Another theory that was born out of the principle of psychological reactance is commodity theory (developed by Brock and Fromkin). It states that information that is more exclusive because it can only be retrieved from one specific source for example, is rated as more persuasive. A student of the author conducted an experiment that supported this theory. Coincidentally, this student was already a businessman with his own company that imported meat and sold it to supermarkets and other stores. The general design of the study involved the calling of the customers to ask for purchases. This was a usual procedure. However, the calls slightly differed in each condition. In the first one, the salesperson would merely ask for a purchase. In the second condition, the prospective customers were again asked for a purchase but were also informed that meat would be scarce in the following months. Finally, the third group was also informed about the supply shortfall but received the additional remark that this information was not available to everyone since the company’s contacts were exclusive. When sales were compared, the first condition led to the least revenue; in the second condition, sales more than doubled; in the third condition, six times more orders were placed than in the first.

What are the optimal conditions for the scarcity principle?

As it was shown with almost every other previously discussed principle, scarcity is more powerful in some situations than in others. To illustrate this, an experiment of Stephen Worchel and colleagues (1975) should be investigated. The setting resembled a consumer study in which participants were given a jar of cookies whose quality they had to rate. The conditions differed in the amount of cookies in the jar (i.e. two vs. ten). As the scarcity principle would predict, people that had to rate a cookie from a jar of two attested a better quality and higher desirability compared to those participants with a jar of ten. However, by slightly altering the procedure there was even more to learn from this experiment. Instead of being exposed to two cookies right from the beginning, subjects were first presented with a jar of ten cookies which was replaced with the jar containing only two shortly before they had to try them (new scarcity). Another control group was again exposed to two cookies right from the beginning (constant scarcity). Results showed that an even higher desire and quality rating resulted from the new scarcity.

These findings have been found to be applicable to more severe aspects of society: James C. Davies (1962, 1969) argued that revolutions are more likely to occur when a period of increased economic and social growth is followed by a slight decrease in these conditions. The American Revolution for example took place just after Britain wanted to cut the excessively high standards of living and low taxes of its colonists by increasing taxes. Davies was able to relate his theory to a variety of such situations (e.g. French, Russian, Egyptian revolutions, American Civil War, and black riots in the 1960s). For the same reason, parents who apply discipline inconsistently are likely to be faced with rebellious children. They will perceive even slight punishments as a deprivation of their established freedoms, since they are allowed to deviate in other situations.

Another factor that determines the effectiveness of the scarcity principle is competition. To examine this factor a consideration of two additional conditions in the cookie study is helpful. Some of the participants who first saw the full jar which was then replaced by the scarce variant were told that some cookies had to be distributed to another rater, whereas people in another condition received the information that there was an error and that they were supposed to have only two cookies right from the beginning. People in the first condition who experienced the loss as a result of social demand liked the pastry more than subjects in the second condition. This effect of competition as a powerful motivator is often exploited by advertisers (e.g. “Hurry before somebody else takes the product”) but also by people in a relationship to heat up the partners emotions by telling of (or inventing) a new admirer.

How powerful the combined effect of scarcity and rivalry is can be shown by the example of former vice president of American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Barry Diller. In 1973, it was the first time that networks could enter an open-bid auction to gain the rights for a film (The Poseidon Adventure) they could then air on their channels. Since it concerned the rights for only one motion picture, this resource was certainly scarce and once bought these rights would remain in the hands of the winning company for (probably almost) ever. Three networks competed in the auction and the obvious rivalry led Diller to bid 3.3 million dollar, even though very generous analyses done by his company expected a maximum revenue of 2 million dollar. The competition and scarcity obviously blurred Diller’s objectivity and afterwards he stated that ABC would never enter an auction situation again.

How can exploitation of the scarcity principle be prevented?

As it was already shown, scarcity tends to obscure our capacity to think logically. As a result, it is hard to counter, since thinking would be needed to engage in proper evaluations of the situation. To bypass this drawback, we should not focus on a cognitive and effortful approach but rather examine our feelings that are triggered by the effect of excitement that scarcity produces. This means that in a first step we should use this feeling of inexplicable arousal as a warning sign to calm down. In a next step, we should remind ourselves that often we desire something scarce just for the sake of possessing it, not because it has any specific value for us. Take the example of the author’s brother. To fund his college education he resold used cars. His most effective technique was to give each prospective customer the same time for an appointment to have a look at the car. Faced with this situation of rivalry, often the first potential buyer jumped at the purchase, reacting quickly due to his inability to think straight under such circumstances. Taking this example, our response in the second step (i.e. after we used the initial feeling of arousal to be alarmed) should be to ask ourselves if we want the car just to possess it or to actually drive it. In the first case we can simply proceed since objective consideration is not necessary. However, in the second case we should remember that the car functions equally well (or bad), whether it is scarce or not.