Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

We are influenced by what those around us do, the norms of conduct.  Sometimes those norms are descriptive; it’s how things are done around here.  Sometimes those norms are prescriptive; it’s how things should be done around here.  Descriptive norms typically help us choose the correct or effective action to perform.  By contrast, prescriptive norms tell us how to connect with those around us.  Thus, you get different responses from the Other Guy depending upon whether the norm is descriptive or prescriptive.  Robert Cialdini has explored norms for most of his persuasion career and he and his team provide another interesting application with this report in the Psi issue of JPSP.  This time we’re looking at how depletion interacts with type of norm to affect compliance.

We’ve discussed depletion here before.  The theory argues that self regulation requires resources and if you deplete those resources, self regulation becomes more difficult.  In General ELM terms I conceptualize depletion as a WATTage switch.  Provide a task that requires attention and WATTage goes down leaving the Peripheral Route as the only road the Other Guy will travel.  Now, the interesting angle the Cialdini team pursues is how the two norm types, descriptive or prescriptive (also called injunctive), interact with that depletion as WATTage play.  Here’s their thinking.

In the present research, we advance such understanding by demonstrating that an impaired capacity for effortful self-regulation (i.e., reduction in “willpower”) increases the effectiveness of social influence attempts that highlight descriptive norms but decreases the effectiveness of attempts that highlight injunctive norms.

Now, why is this interaction present?

Whereas the descriptive norm provides information that is particularly relevant for the intrapersonal goal of behaving effectively or accurately (i.e., choosing correctly), the injunctive norm is particularly relevant for the interpersonal goal of building and maintaining social relationships (i.e., social approval; Cialdini & Trost, 1998).

An understanding of this important function of self-regulation—to promote resolution of conflicts between interests of the independent self and the social collective—suggests that this capacity is likely to be involved in facilitating the influence of injunctive social norms.

Thus, the Cialdini team argues that when there is no depletion of self regulation, the Other Guy will go high WATT and that injunctive/prescriptive norms will dominate.  By contrast, when the Other Guy is depleted, instead we will see reduced influence of injunctive/prescriptive norms.

Stated in General ELM terms (my thinking here, not the paper’s), descriptive norms are relatively easy to process (this goes here; that goes there) while injunctive norms require more thought (who approves and why and do I want to please that person and on and on).  Thus, under low WATT conditions (depletion), people cannot engage the necessary cognitive work for injunctive norms and instead will follow easier descriptive norms.  Under high WATT conditions (no depletion) people do have the necessary cognitive resources and can engage and consider injunctive norms.

To explore these hypothesized relationships, the Cialdini team conducts four experiments that push the connections in different ways.  The first two experiments look at the semantic and cognitive implications of the interaction while the last two studies explore the behavior implications.  The team also employs both lab and field settings across the four experiments, so we have a variety tests on the proposition, not just one study.  I’ll leave it as a treat for you to explore the first three studies and discuss only Experiment 4 here.

During a regular class students were invited to participate in a survey study.  This request occurred either before class began (no depletion) or after a particularly challenging and involving class activity (depletion).  Here’s the class activity:

This activity, roughly 1.5 hrs in length, involved students taking the perspectives of a mental health professional and a client with a particular personality disorder.  All students alternated between these two roles for a series of different disorders.  Students playing the role of mental health professional had up to 1 min to make a diagnosis for each “client.”

After the students completed the survey they were asked if they would be willing to stick around and complete another series of surveys.  (Here the experimenter pointed to a huge stack of questionnaires for that action.)  Then the experimenter manipulated the norm type.

Participants who had received the descriptive norm version of the packet then read the following: “When given the opportunity in past semesters, most students in classes like yours have decided to complete these extra surveys on their own time.” Alternatively, participants who had received the injunctive norm version of the packet read, This is our first time trying this method of data collection, but last semester we asked a number of students in classes like yours to give us feedback on its likely success/failure.  Most students indicated that it would be successful because they thought people ought to be willing to complete these extra surveys on their own time.

Students were asked to write down how many of the surveys they would be willing to complete.  And that was the dependent measure of compliance to the norm and depletion manipulations.  Here’s a bar chart of the compliance outcomes.

Boom.  That beautiful crossover, disordinal interaction.   But is it meaningful?  Statistical analysis, please.

As in Experiment 3, we obtained a significant interaction between self-regulation condition and norm type, F(1, 63) = 10.41, p = .002, ηp2 = .142.

That eta squared of .142 is a Medium Effect size, roughly a Windowpane of 35/65.  Furthermore . . .

. . . participants who had been exposed to the injunctive norm agreed to fill out significantly fewer surveys when self-regulation capacity was low (M = 2.24) than when high (M = 5.32), F(1, 63) = 5.66, p = .020, ηp2 = .082 . . . participants in the descriptive norm condition agreed to fill out significantly more surveys when self-regulatory capacity was low (M = 5.29) than when high (M = 2.37), F(1, 63) = 4.79, p = .032, ηp2 = .071.

The effect sizes here are Small plus, about 40/60.  They demonstrate in detail the crossover effect where under low WATT you get descriptive while under high WATT you get prescriptive.

This little field study nicely demonstrates the hypothesis.  When people are depleted, they follow the simpler to process descriptive norm (“most students in classes like yours have decided to complete these extra surveys”).  When they are not, they follow the more socially and cognitively complex prescriptive norm (“most students indicated that it would be successful because they thought people ought to be willing to complete these extra surveys”).  And, when you read all the studies, you appreciate the generality of the effect and for me at least, tend to see it as an established persuasion principle.

Now, nuance.  Sure, you could construct descriptive norms that were highly complex and prescriptive norms that were highly simple; this would probably kill the effect described here.  Generally speaking, descriptive norms are simpler in the majority of instances while prescriptive norms typically demonstrate greater complexity because they combine both what to do and the social implications of compliance or resistance.  And, do consider this complexity issue when you try to make a practical persuasion play with norms.

That noted, realize the general application.  Norms are not monolithic, but contain that dual function of description and prescription.  Realize which you are aiming at while also realizing the differential demands each norm makes.  Realize that descriptive norms are almost always easier to activate since they require less WATTage and also probably function more effectively on the Peripheral Route.  Literally, just do it.

Prescriptive norms, however, require a bit more planning and craftiness – the hand of a persuasion maven.  They require enough WATTage for seeing and accepting the injunction, but they also can easily elicit a Reactant response, that perceived unfair restriction.  Prescriptive norms also move a source into dangerous persuasion territory.  Thou Shall and Thou Shall Not are incredibly sincere statements and All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.  When you as a persuasion source moves prescriptively you’d better check your sleeve and see if your heart is showing.

I cannot do justice to all four experiments in this paper, but only ask that you read the paper entirely for yourself.  This is a great example of what Cialdini calls, Full Cycle Research, an approach that runs a hypothesis through a Research Machine to see if it still holds its shape after repeated beatings.

Jacobson, R. P., Mortensen, C. R., & Cialdini, R. B. (2011). Bodies obliged and unbound: Differentiated response tendencies for injunctive and descriptive social norms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 433-448.

doi:10.1037/a0021470