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Mutual requests and their satisfaction are perhaps the most common type of social interaction, because no one person can do without asking others with some kind of personal or general requests.
Compliance, like conformism, is explained by the operation of social norms. However, it differs from conformity. Compliance refers to behavior that is carried out in response to a direct, directive requirement or a request to do so and not otherwise.
Request situation
The situation in which the applicant and the addressee of the request find themselves is fraught with mental costs for both one and the other. At the same time, the position of the petitioner looks more vulnerable.
Unless, of course, a person has become accustomed to the role of an eternal supplicant and the strategy of supplication has not become the main or even the only strategy of his behavior. In this case, the individual may even like to demonstrate his helplessness and dependence, he is pleased to show that he is weak, not self-sufficient, that he is a victim of circumstances and therefore always needs care, care, supervision and help.
Such people do not feel uncomfortable in a requesting situation. On the contrary, they feel the satisfaction of having a well-performed role of supplicant, because it has produced the results that they expected.
But for many people, the petitioner's position is unpleasant for a number of reasons:
- it may turn out to be incompatible with a person's self-consciousness. Most people perceive themselves as independent, self-reliant, self-sufficient individuals. Therefore, it is not easy for them to be aware of themselves as supplicants.
- people do not like to show their dependence on others, showing helplessness, inability or inability to solve their problems on their own.
- when making a request, a person is always afraid of being rejected. A person who is already uncomfortable in the role of a supplicant, having received a refusal, feels humiliated. Added to this feeling are negative feelings caused by frustration.
An implicit request implies a desire to influence a person, change his behavior, intentions, goals, plans. After all, in fact, the petitioner, as it were, offers the addressee of the request: "Drop your business and take care of mine." And this, in turn, suggests the following: "All your worries and problems are not worth a damn, but mine are really important."
Therefore, a person's attempt to get someone else to fulfill a request or demand, that is, an attempt to achieve compliance, implicitly assumes that he has some right or power to impose his worries and problems on others.
In addition, the request contains the assumption that the person to whom it is addressed is by nature a soft, pliable person, ready to give in to everyone, agree with everything that you can "twist ropes" out of him, that he is naive , soft-bodied. After all, people who do not assume such qualities are not approached with requests.
As you can see, the situation of the request is fraught with psychological problems for both the applicant and the addressee of the request.
Compliance and courtesy
Nevertheless, mutual requests and their satisfaction are perhaps the most common type of social interaction. After all, no person can do without not addressing others with some kind of request. Most people, by mastering communication skills, learn - who is better or worse - in such rules and ways of interaction that largely neutralize or at least mitigate the negative effects of the request.
The most effective and reliable way to reduce mental discomfort and "save face" in a situation of request is politeness.
According to the "courtesy theory" created by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, a polite request does not threaten the identity of either the applicant or the recipient of the request. In addition, polite requests and demands make it possible to most effectively achieve compliance and consent (Brown P., Levinson S., 1987).
Of course, in an effort to achieve what they want, people are not always guided by the rules and norms of politeness. Threats, bribery, lies, reproaches, criticism, an appeal to a sense of duty, conscience, justice, etc. are often used. From the point of view of psychological correctness, all this is less effective than an ordinary polite request that does not threaten a person's self-consciousness.
Refusal, expressed in a polite manner, will also be less painful for the petitioner than a rude refusal. Thus, no matter how comical the formula “Asked politely - politely refused,” it is still more preferable than a rude request and an equally rude refusal.
Manipulative techniques of influence
The use of manipulative methods of influence is based on the exploitation of social norms existing in society, that is, on the use of normative influence.
A person begins to get acquainted with the norms of duty and responsibility from early childhood. Everyone knows that he should be kind, honest, responsive, hardworking, accurate, polite, disciplined, etc. It's another matter how much this knowledge is presented in his self-consciousness. There are many people for whom social norms remained factors of external influence, and not of internal conviction.
If norms turn out to be included in a person's self-consciousness, then they, through various mental mechanisms, begin to influence his behavior. Accumulated rates of debt affect a person's emotional state and induce socially acceptable behavior.
Consider the basic techniques that exploit the norms of debt and responsibility.
1. "Foot in the door" (the-Foot-in-the-Door-effect). This technique owes its name to itinerant salespeople or the disreputable "network marketing" in the Russian open spaces. Salesmen claim that if they manage to stick their foot through the door of the house, then there will be no problems with the sale of the goods. Here a psychological pattern is triggered: if a person once conceded by agreeing to fulfill a small request (opened the door), then there is a high probability that he will yield in the future, responding to a more substantial request. The manipulator, in this case, acts in full accordance with the saying: "Give your finger - it will bite off your hand to the elbow."
At least two conditions are required for the foot-in-the-door technique to work:
First, an initial, small request should be significant enough so that the addressee of the request, after fulfilling it, has reason to perceive himself as an exemplary, responsive citizen.
Second, the person must maintain the feeling that he independently agreed to fulfill the request, that he was not forced to do so. If he perceives the request as a compulsion or an order and he has the feeling that he is being forced to comply with the demand, he will have no reason to consider his concession as a desire to help another.
The "foot in the door" technique is powerless against people who identify themselves as uncompromising, cautious, prudent, devoid of "stupid sentimentality." The very first request will be met with hostility by such a person. Therefore, addressing him with a second, "weighted" request is simply pointless.
People of this kind have no difficulty in refusing any request. For them, this is a familiar, almost automatic response to requests. Refusal in this case is necessary, again, to confirm his self-categorization and self-awareness in general.
2. "Trial ball" (Low Ball). Literally translated, it means "low ball". Throwing in an insidious low ball is practiced in baseball. In the Russian language there is a well-established concept of "trial balloon".
This manipulative technique of influence was discovered by Robert Cialdini in the arsenal of means of car dealers (Cialdini R., 1999).
Its essence is to induce the buyer to buy a car by offering it at a somewhat reduced price. Let's say $ 400 cheaper than the competition. After the buyer has agreed to buy the car, the terms of the deal change and, ultimately, the purchase costs the person more than the price he was initially tempted to buy. To justify the change in the terms of the deal, the seller uses various pretexts - either the manager refused to approve the deal, or the trading conditions changed, or there was an error in the calculations, etc.
The effect of taking a "trial balloon" is entirely due to the obligations that a person takes on. Then he is forced to create a series of excuses in order to explain the commitment to himself and thereby strengthen his intention to fulfill it. When the first excuse - the low price - is no longer valid, the person continues to look for new excuses to support their commitment. He is embarrassed to refuse, he wants both for himself and in front of others to preserve the image of a "man of his word."
Apparently, an important role for the final decision is played by the fact that a person has already gotten used to the thing he has chosen, identified with it, tried it on for himself or for himself. In other words, in his self-consciousness this thing has already become, as it were, his own, and therefore - if we proceed from the theory of personality of William James - and a part of his material self.
3. Bait. It is a kind of "test ball". The effectiveness of the technique is achieved due to the action of the same mental mechanisms as in the “trial balloon” technique, since both of them exploit the same feeling - a sense of responsibility.
Imagine that you walk into a store and see, say, a beautiful shirt that is surprisingly cheap. You know for sure that in other stores exactly the same shirts are sold at two, or even three times more expensive. Naturally, you immediately decide to buy such a wonderful and inexpensive item. But then it suddenly turns out that there is no shirt of the size or color you need. Seeing your disappointment, the seller offers you exactly the same thing, moreover, suitable for you in all characteristics, but at a high price. He explains this by the fact that this shirt is from another batch of goods, so it has not yet been discounted. What will you do in these circumstances?
There are many people who will refuse to buy and leave. But the fact of the matter is that not a single manipulative technique is a universal, reliable psychological "master key" designed for 100% coverage of the population. Such methods of influence simply do not exist. The manipulator seller is, of course, interested in more modest results. He knows very well that there will always be buyers who will be embarrassed to abandon their intentions. In these conditions, a person feels very uncomfortable. In addition, the seller is so polite, caring, courteous that, really, it is inconvenient to refuse. It is for such people that the "bait" is designed.
It should be borne in mind that a sense of responsibility, so strongly influencing behavior, arises in a person only when he himself voluntarily accepts obligations. If obligations and responsibilities are imposed from the outside, then they do not have any significant impact on the person, since they are perceived by him as external pressure.
4. "Not at the door, then at the window" (the-Door-in-the-Face-effect). The technique is carried out as follows: first, a person is asked to fulfill some extremely burdensome request for him, and after he refuses to satisfy it, he is asked for a more modest favor. As a rule, the person agrees to fulfill the second, reduced request. It is clear that this is the goal pursued by the “compliance professionals”.
Compliance, shown after a decrease in the request, is explained by the fact that a person perceives its decrease as a kind of concession to himself. And so he takes a step towards the petitioner, so as not to look in him, and in his own eyes too, completely callous and ungrateful. In other words, he reciprocates the concession and also concedes.
Another reason for compliance is the "principle of contrast". The significantly reduced request looks against the background of the initial, overstated, absolutely trivial. Thus, the effectiveness of the reception “not through the door, then through the window” is due to the noticeable difference in the requests presented. True, the first request should be, though clearly overstated, but still realistic, not fantastic. Unrealistic demands immediately set the person up for a skeptical perception of the situation, and a further decrease in the request is not taken seriously by him.
In addition, for the successful application of the technique, it is necessary that both requests, both the first and the next, come from the same person. And finally, both requests should be about the same (Cialdini R., 1999).
