Psychology of Influence: Dialogue Involvement (Part 1)

[Music] in the last episode we heard that the common phrase how are you feeling today can make us more compliant when it comes to donations for a charity organization and one of the explanations that we discussed for this effect was based on behavioral consistency as many people especially in the u.s. tend to answer the question how are you feeling today with great I'm fine perfect it becomes not that easy to say no I am NOT going to help the poor and the needy because it would make us look heartless to say well on the one hand I feel great but no I'm not going to help people who don't feel great so this was a traditional explanation for the so called foot in the mouth technique but the studies that we will discuss today questioned this explanation because the scientists hold the opinion that the question how are you feeling today creates a dialogue that is similar to a situation in which two friends talk to each other the scientists say it's no wonder that we tend to help the other person more when he or she talks to us like we were a friend so how could we actually find out which of the two explanations behavior consistency or dialogue involvement explain the effect of the foot in the mouth technique well both explanations make different predictions whereas the behavioral consistency explanation predicts that compliance should only increase when the other person answers with yeah great I'm fine perfect the dialogue involvement explanation predicts that it doesn't matter how the other person answers because even if the other person says well actually I do not feel that great today there is still a dialogue that is quite similar to the one between friends empirical data especially the study by dole in skin a lot andrew duck published in 2001 empirical data indeed supports the dialogue involvement explanation because already in their first experiment to Lenski and colleagues could show that when students were asked to spend money for an orphanage they were more than twice as much willing to spend the money if they weren't asked directly but if they were first involved in a dialogue so the requestor said but you have to know that the study took place during the examination time at the university and therefore the requester said hi is this session going to be hard for you well actually yes it probably will be and how many Exum's are you taking well it will be quite tough during the next two weeks I have six exams I still have to learn quite a lot then the next question was like in the food in the mouth technique so how are you feeling before the session well actually not that well I had some sleepless nights and I'm really exhausted at the moment and when the students were asked after this short everyday small talk whether they were willing to spend money for an orphanage their compliance rate was about 63% and therefore this dialogue involvement was indeed more than twice as successful as the direct approach and what was even more interesting that there was no significant difference between those participants who answered the question how are you feeling in a positive or neutral way in comparison to those participants who answered this question in a negative way well actually I do not feel good at the moment so this result and the results of their other experiments speak for the explanation that it's really the impression that we are now talking to someone who is like a friends and therefore we behave towards him like he was a friend and we are therefore more help you