User:Ayen!no/Compliance Psychology

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Compliance is a response—specifically, a submission—made in reaction to a request. The request may be explicit (e.g., foot-in-the-door technique) or implicit (e.g., advertising). The target may or may not recognize that they are being urged to act in a particular way.

Compliance psychology is the study of the process where individuals comply to social influence, typically in response to requests and pressures brought on by others. It encompasses a variety of theories, mechanisms, and applications in a wide range of contexts (e.g. personal and professional). Compliance psychology is essential to understand across many different fields. Some of various fields include healthcare, where patients adherence to medical advice is necessary, furthermore, marketing where consumer behavior is prioritized strategies can be developed.[1]

Social psychology is centered on the idea of social influence. It's the effect that words, actions, or mere presence of other people (real or imagined) have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior. Social influence is the driving force behind compliance. It is important that psychologists and ordinary people alike recognize that social influence extends beyond our behavior—to our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs—and that it takes on many forms.  Persuasion and the gaining of compliance are particularly significant types of social influence since they utilize the respective effect's power to attain the submission of others. Compliance is significant because it is a type of social influence that affects our everyday behavior—especially social interactions. Compliance is a complicated concept that must be studied in depth so that the uses, implications, theoretical, and experimental approaches may be better understood.

The following techniques have been proven to effectively induce compliance from another party.

Foot-in-the-door

Main article: Foot-in-the-door technique

In utilizing this technique, the subject is asked to perform a small request—a favor that typically requires minimal involvement. After this, a larger request is presented. According to "successive approximations", because the subject complied with initial requests, they are more likely to feel obligated to fulfill additional favors.

Door-in-the-face

Main article: Door-in-the-face technique

This technique begins with an initial grand request. This request is expected to be turned down; thus, it is followed by a second, more reasonable request. This technique is decidedly more effective than foot-in-the-door since foot-in-the-door utilizes a gradual escalation of requests.

Low-ball

Main article: Low-ball

Frequently employed by car salesmen, low-balling gains compliance by offering the subject something at a lower price only to increase the price at the last moment. The buyer is more likely to comply with this price change since they feel like a mental agreement to a contract has occurred.

Ingratiation

Main article: Ingratiation

This attempt to obtain compliance involves gaining someone's approval so they will be more likely to appease your demands. Edward E. Jones discusses three forms of ingratiation:

1. flattery
2. opinion conformity and
3. self-presentation (presenting one's own attributes in a manner that appeals to the target)

Norm of reciprocity

Main article: Norm of reciprocity

This technique explains that due to the injunctive social norm that people will return a favor when one is granted to them; compliance is more likely to occur when the requestor has previously complied with one of the subject's requests.

Evolving Theories of Compliance

The study of compliance is often recognized for the overt demonstrations of dramatic experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment and the Stanley Milgram shock experiments. These experiments serve as a display of the psychological phenomena of compliance. In those instances, compliance frequently occurred in response to overt social forces. These types of studies have provided useful insight into the nature of compliance. However, today's researchers are inclined to concentrate their efforts on subtle, indirect and/or unconscious social influences.

Those involved in this modern social-cognitive movement are attempting to discover the ways in which subjects' implicit and explicit beliefs, opinions, and goals affect information processing and decision making in settings where influential forces are present. The social-cognitive movement puts emphasis on the importance of grasping cognitive processes to understand compliance. Researchers within the field study implicit and explicit beliefs and goals influence. In particularly, how they influence the individuals' decisions in social context. Furthermore, it redevelops tradition notions regarding social influence.[2]

Social Impact Theory

Bibb Latané originally proposed the social impact theory that consists of three principles and provides wide-ranging rules that govern these individual processes. The general theory suggests we think of social impact as the result of social forces operating in a social structure (Latané). The theory's driving principles can make directional predictions regarding the effects of strength, immediacy, and number on compliance. However, the principles are not capable of specifying precision on future outcomes.

Strength

The stronger and more important a group is to an individual—the more likely that individual is to comply with social influence. Strength refers to hierarchy, status, position of authority, and age in relation to social influence.

Immediacy

Immediacy refers to the closeness of the group to the individual at the time of an influence attempt. Immediacy includes proximity, distance, and buffers in regard to social influence. The proximity of the group makes an individual more likely to conform and comply with the group's pressures. These pressures are strongest when the group is closer to the individual and composed of people the individual cares about (e.g., friends, family) and/or authority figures.

Number

Number refers to the amount of individuals in the group. Number pertains to the sources and the targets involving social influence. Research has found that compliance increases as the number of people in the group increases. However, once the group gets larger, containing 4 or 5 people, compliance is less likely to occur. After this point, each additional person has less of an influence. However, adding more members to a small group of about 3 people has a greater effect on influence (Aronson).

References

Response to Peer Review: All of the peer reviewers gave good points I could fix relating to the same issues. So, I fixed all the headings to make them more cohesive with the information that would be discussed in the given section. I changed the strength, immediacy, and number sections to incorporate the information previously in the parentheses into the text to provide an in-depth explanation. I took out weird wording and the jumble of numbers to make the "number" section make better sense. I fixed a lot of grammatical errors I missed the first time throughout the entire article. Lastly, I found good, current peer-reviewed secondary literatures regarding the compliance psychology and the social cognitive movement. I linked both the articles within the text and plan on adding them to the References section.

Instructor Feedback

I am unclear how your first edits under "Strength" are going to be integrated with existing work. I added in suggested edits under both the "Immediacy" and "Number" sections. I encourage you to bring over more of the published Wikipedia article so it is clear how all of your edits will integrate with existing writing. I would also encourage you to review the final assignment rubric. This will help you ensure that you are targeting all of the components I will assess. Don't forget you need to cite a minimum of two examples of peer-reviewed secondary literature published in the last 10 years.