This is my second speech on the science of influence.
In my previous speech, I explained why these rules of influence work so well.
I then went on to explain the “contrast principle”.
And lastly, I addressed the first rule of influence – reciprocity – the universal rule of equal exchange.
Now, who’s waiting for more?
The second rule of influence is called “commitment and consistency”.
Being perceived as consistent in one’s believes, words and deed, offer three advantages.
1. Good personal consistency is highly valued by society.
2. It provides a short-cut to make future decisions based on earlier ones.
3. Sometimes a rational decision done with careful deliberation maybe too painful to accept
Let’s consider a scenario. How many of you buy Christmas gifts for your kids? I see, quite a few. Imagine this conversation between you and your son a month before Christmas.
You: “So what do you want from Santa for Christmas this year?”.
You son replies: “I’d love to the new baseball game for my Nintendo Wii!”.
You ask, “but why?”
You sons responds, “Everyone wants it, it’s a really cool game, it feels like real baseball. And it will make my Christmas so much better.”
You respond: “alright, let’s see what Santa brings this year, I’m sure he won’t disappoint you”.
Now, couple of weeks later, it’s almost time, so you look for the new baseball game at Amazon, you can’t find it, then you go to all your electronic local stores, they were all out-of-stock. As Christmas nears, you are growing desperate. At the last minute, you decided to buy your son the skiing game instead, which has plenty in stock at your local BestBuy the day before Christmas. You were thinking, skiing, baseball, they are all participatory sports, what’s the difference.
Christmas morning, your son tears open the gift wrapping, and look a bit disappointed. You tried to console him, “cheer up, I heard skiing game is much better”.
Your son responds, “Thanks dad, it’s no baseball, and you promised that Santa Clause will bring me the baseball game for Christmas.”
You feel really guilty. Although Christmas season is over, you still can’t get over it. Then, in late January, the baseball game start showing up on store shelves again. What do you do? The first chance you got, you buy your son a copy of the baseball game, to keep your promise.
Ladies, and gentleman, what I’ve described here was based on a real story. Some toy manufactures in the past has done this, where they deliberately pump-up the advertising for a specific toy, and under-supply it to the stores, so parents instead of buying one, actually bought two games for their kids to keep their promise.
As also demonstrated by this little scenario, the key to the successful deployment of this principle is commitment.
Allow me to demonstrate some important characteristics to increase the level of commitment.
[Aud 01], would you say you are an environmentally friendly person? Yes, do you recycle regularly? Sounds like you are really into it. Would you please come up here and note the fact with the words “[Aud 01]” recycles regularly. Let’s applaud for [Aud 01]’s recycling effort. Thanks you. Now, the Environmental Working Group is running a campaign, we looking for volunteers to put up a sign in their front yard that simply says “Save the Earth, Recycle”. Since you recycle regularly, would you agree for us to put a sign in you front yard for a month? Great. Thank you for being such a good citizen, I wish more people are like you. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’d point out the sign is about 5 feet high 3 feet wide with large yellow letters. Will that be a problem? You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. Great, thanks, we’ll be over next week.
The point I’m trying to get across here is that it’s not just any commitment, the most long-lasting commitment has these four characteristics: active, public, effortful, and viewed as internally motivated.
Active means the commitment was acted by the person. People infer their likings via their own behaviors. The simply act of coming up here and writing it down makes it stick.
Public means it’s done publicly. That’s why I ask [Aud 01] in front of an audience. Having it written down also helps me to refer to it publicly later.
Effortful means the commitment takes effort. Me asking [Aud 01] to come up here and write it down intentionally increased the effort of the commitment.
Viewing as internally motivated, not coerced means the person making the commitment internalizes the commitment as their own. The key is to offer a reward that is disportionately smaller than the effort involved. I only offered verbal encouragement and praise, nothing more. Thinking back, [Aud 01] is likely to think it’s he/she willingness to commit, since the reward was not big enough to justify the motivation.
I can not stress strongly enough that this rule and any other rules of influence should be applied with the full ethical implication in mind. Using it to manipulate others for your own gain will not establish a long trusting relationship.
To recognize and resist influence of consistency pressure, we need to listen to our gut and our heart. There are situations where your gut tells you that you are making the wrong decisions, or committing to things unwillingly. In this case, explain to the requester that it will be foolish for you to comply.
In other situations, you can not be certain that you’ve been taken advantage of. When in doubt, ask yourself, “Knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice?” If the answer is no, reconsider the commitment and act accordingly.
To summarize, the second rule of influence is commitment and consistency. It leverages people’s tendency to value consistency to obtain compliance.