Increasing Compliance by Reducing Resistance

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This research adopts an approach-avoidance model of attitude position and change and focuses on the avoidance gradient. In many cases, a request, an offer, or a suggestion creates two opposing reactions. The recipient of an offer wants to agree, wants to enjoy, wants to participate in fulfilling the request, but at the same time the recipient may be resistant to the expense, to the effort, and/or to the commitment that comes with fulfilling the request. The dynamics of this approach-avoidance conflict may be changed either by augmenting the approach forces or by diminishing the avoidance tendencies. Many theories of social influence focus on the approach side of this conflict, and suggest ways of adding to the number or quality of reasons for taking action. This research focuses on ways to reduce resistance to persuasion as a means of increasing compliance. Two related programs of research are included, one investigating how resistance can be disrupted, the other investigating how resistance can be depleted by use. The first program of research focuses on disrupting resistance. The investigator's Disrupt-then-Reframe method of social influence uses a subtle disruption to lessen resistance to reasons for accepting the offer. A slight unexpected element in an offer, such as stating the price of note-cards in pennies rather than dollars or reversing the normal order of two words, makes more persuasive the subsequent reasons or reframes for accepting the offer. Three studies investigate whether a disrupting phrase increases evaluative scrutiny, disrupts elaborative thinking, or interferes with evaluative consideration. The second program investigates whether resistance is a consumable resource. Four studies investigate whether resisting an offer will diminish one's capacity to resist future offers. Together these studies clarify the role of resistance in compliance and attitude change and establish several new strategies for persuasion.