Towards
the end of his motivational speech Al Pacino taps into the persuasive technique
of reciprocity; an individual team member should cooperate not only because his
other team member(s) will, but also because they will all receive a higher pay
off than if only a couple of team members cooperate. Reciprocity is considered
to be a social norm and shown that it can be a tool for persuasion.
For
instance in Cialdini, Green and Rusch’s (1992; experiment 3) experiment each
participant worked with a same sex confederate (posing as a participant). They filled
in a questionnaire individually which was used to establish the participant’s views
on several topics, the core one being a proposal to introduce comprehensive
senior examinations at their university. Afterwards, each individual was allocated one of the topics and told to write 3 arguments to support their personal view
on that topic. They were told that they would discuss each topic at a time. It
was arranged so that the participant’s topic would be discussed first, therefore the confederate
had to read the participant’s arguments. The experimental manipulation came in
the next part as the confederate then had to illustrate whether the participant’s
arguments promoted him or her to change his or her initial view on that topic. In
the yield condition the confederate claimed that the participant’s arguments
had changed the confederate’s mind on this issue in the direction of what the
participant believed. In the resist condition, the confederate claimed that his
or her views have not changed after reading the participant’s arguments. In the
control condition, there was no interaction between the participants. Finally, the
same activity was done with the confederate’s topic (a proposal to introduce comprehensive senior examinations at
their university).
The
results showed that participants produced the greatest attitude change in the
direction of the confederate’s views if the confederate initially yielded to
his or her argument. There was least attitude change when the confederate resisted.
Reference
Cialdini,
R., Green, B.L., & Rusch, A.J. (1992). When tactical pronouncements of
change become real change: The case of reciprocal persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 63, 30-40.
So, in other words, people believe more in their own arguments when others claim to be persuaded by those arguments? Or, as in the Pacino-technique, people believe more in themselves when others believe in them as well. Sounds plausible.
ReplyDeleteI re-typed my description of the experiment and the results as the message I was trying to convey did not come across appropriately. Hope this new write up gives a clearer representation of the research.
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