A disrupt-then-reframe technique of social influence
| Autor: | Barbara Price Davis, Eric S. Knowles |
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| Rok vydání: | 1999 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 76:192-199 |
| ISSN: | 1939-1315 0022-3514 |
| Popis: | Several theories of change imply that disrupting a person's understanding of an event will facilitate a new representation of that event. The authors created a new influence technique involving a small disruption (stating the price of a package of note cards in pennies rather than dollars) and a direct reframing (saying, "It's a bargain"). Four studies showed that a disrupt-then-r eframe (DTR) technique was influential in getting household residents to purchase cards supporting a local charity. Studies 2 and 3 showed that the new technique required both the disruption and the new reframing in that sequence. Study 4 showed the effect when sellers learned 1 sales script and were blind to other scripts. These studies establish the DTR technique and demonstrate the subtlety of some social influence. The psychology of social influence has identified a series of seemingly small variations in a request that can produce great differences in compliance. These have acquired clever nicknames such as foot-in-the-d oor, door-in-the-face, and lowballing (Cialdini, 1993). In this research, we establish a new influence procedure, which we call the disrupt-then-reframe (DTR) technique. The DTR technique rests on the assumption that many everyday persuasive attempts create an approach-avoi dance conflict in the target. The target wants to help, wants to own, or wants to enjoy the offered product or service, but at the same time is resistant to the expense, to the effort, or to the commitment required to do so. Many influence techniques attempt to bolster the approach tendency, that is, to provide additional reasons or additional incentives for compliance. The DTR technique works instead with both the approach and the avoidance forces by disrupting the resistance so that the target can be made susceptible to a persuasive framing of the offer. In four studies, we sold note cards door-to-door for a worthy charity. We presumed that most residents would like to help the charity and would find some use for the note cards but that they would also feel resistant to door-to-door solicitations, spending money, or even complying with someone else's agenda. In this research we introduced a subtle disruption to the sales request. We stated the price in pennies: "The price of these note cards is 300 pennies." The disruption was followed immediately by a reframing that provided additional reasons for purchasing the cards. The reframing we used was as simple and direct as we could make it: "It's a bargain." |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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