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At a GlanceCompliance involves changing your behaviors because someone else asks or tells you to do so. This can be direct, like a friend asking you for a favor, or indirect, such as a business using advertising to convince you to buy their product.Learning more about the psychology of compliance and exploring some examples can help you better understand how it can affectsocial behavior.
At a Glance
Compliance involves changing your behaviors because someone else asks or tells you to do so. This can be direct, like a friend asking you for a favor, or indirect, such as a business using advertising to convince you to buy their product.Learning more about the psychology of compliance and exploring some examples can help you better understand how it can affectsocial behavior.
Compliance involves changing your behaviors because someone else asks or tells you to do so. This can be direct, like a friend asking you for a favor, or indirect, such as a business using advertising to convince you to buy their product.
Learning more about the psychology of compliance and exploring some examples can help you better understand how it can affectsocial behavior.
What Is Compliance?
In psychology, compliance refers to changing one’s behavior at the request or direction of another person.
Unlike obedience, in which the individual making the request for change is in a position of authority, compliance does not rely a power differential.
Compliance involves changing your behavior because someone asked you to do so. While you may have had the option to refuse the request, you chose to comply.
It is important to distinguish between compliance and acceptance. Compliance involves changing a behavior in public, but not necessarily in private. While you might modify your behavior, it does not mean that you necessarily agree with it.
There are many different situations where compliance comes into play. Some examples include:
Sometimes compliance can involve a direct request. Someone asks you specifically to do something, and you do it. In other cases, the request may be more subtle and even insidious.
RecapCompliance is defined as changing behavior in response to a request. Such requestions can be direct, but they can also involve more indirect forms of social influence.
Recap
Compliance is defined as changing behavior in response to a request. Such requestions can be direct, but they can also involve more indirect forms of social influence.
What Is Obedience?
Examples of Compliance
It can be helpful to consider a few different examples of compliance to better understand how it works. Some examples of compliance include:
Techniques Used in Compliance
Compliance is a major topic of interest within the field ofconsumer psychology. This specialty area focuses on the psychology of consumer behavior, including how sellers can influence buyers and persuade them to purchase goods and services.
Marketers often rely on a number of different strategies to obtain compliance from consumers. The following are just a few common techniques they might use.
The “Door-in-the-Face” Technique
For example, imagine that a business owner asks you to make a large investment in a new business opportunity. After you decline the request, the business owner asks if you could at least make a small product purchase to help them out.
After refusing the first offer, you might feel compelled to comply with their second appeal.
The “Foot-in-the-Door” Technique
For example, your coworker asks if you fill in for them for a day. After you say yes, they then ask if you could just continue to fill in for the rest of the week.
The “That’s-Not-All” Technique
Often on a television infomercial, once a product has been pitched, the seller then adds an additional offer before the potential purchaser has made a decision.
“That’s not all,” the salesperson might suggest, “If you buy a set of widgets now, we’ll throw in an extra widget for free!” The goal is to make the offer as appealing as possible.
The “Lowball” Technique
This strategy involves getting a person to make a commitment and then raising the terms or stakes of that commitment.
For example, a salesperson might get you to agree to buy a particular cell phone plan at a low price before adding on a number of hidden fees that then make the plan much more costly.
Ingratiation
This approach involves gaining approval from the target in order to gain compliance.Strategies such as flattering the target or presenting oneself in a way that appeals to the individual are often used in this approach.
Reciprocity
People are more likely to comply if they feel that the other person has already done something for them. We have been socialized to believe that if people extend kindness to us, we should return the favor.
Researchers have found that thereciprocity effectis so strong that it can work even when the initial favor is uninvited or comes from someone we do not like.
What Is Consumer Psychology?
Research on Compliance
There are a number of well-known studies that have explored issues related to compliance, conformity, and obedience.
The Asch Conformity Experiments
PsychologistSolomon Aschconducted aseries of experimentsto demonstrate how people conform in groups.Participants were shown three lines of different lengths, and then asked to select which line matched a fourth “standard” line.
When others in the group (who were planted) selected the wrong line, many participants would conform to group pressure and choose the wrong line length.
The Milgram Obedience Experiment
Even though the shocks were not real, the participants genuinely believed that they shocked the other person.
Milgram found that 65% of people would deliver the maximum, possibly fatal, electrical shocks on the orders of an authority figure.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
During the 1970s, psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment in which participants played the roles of guards and prisoners in a mock prison set up in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University.
Originally slated to last two weeks, theStanford prison experimenthad to be terminated after just six days after the guards began displaying abusive behavior and the prisoners became anxious and highly stressed. The experiment demonstrated how people would comply with the expectations that come from particular social roles.
RecapSeveral well-known psychology experiments have explored some of the conditions in which compliance occurs. Such experiments include Asch’s line experiments, Milgram’s obedience experiments, and the Stanford prison experiment.
Several well-known psychology experiments have explored some of the conditions in which compliance occurs. Such experiments include Asch’s line experiments, Milgram’s obedience experiments, and the Stanford prison experiment.
Social Psychology Research Methods
Key Factors Affecting Compliance
Several essential factors influence compliance. The presence of these factors makes it more likely that people will comply.
What This Means For YouCompliance can play a role in many everyday actions that people take, from the purchases they make to the way they respond to others. Understanding how compliance works, and learning to recognize some common persuasive techniques that marketers use to obtain compliance, may help you make better decisions.
What This Means For You
Compliance can play a role in many everyday actions that people take, from the purchases they make to the way they respond to others. Understanding how compliance works, and learning to recognize some common persuasive techniques that marketers use to obtain compliance, may help you make better decisions.
Major Social Psychology Perspectives
13 Sources
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