Awkward moment when the book is due back to the library on Tuesday and I’ve read the grand total of 3 chapters. Oops. Anyway.
The basic theme of the chapter related to commitment. In society, consistency is very highly valued (think school, jobs, friendships, etc.), so often people have very automatic responses to situations because they want to appear consistent with what they have said or done (i.e. actions that they have previously committed or future plans that they have committed to)
This affects people in many ways, because a lot of it is subconscious, automatic, conditioned responses.
Example 1: You’re asked who you think will win a horse race. You say “Maybe Horse A? Not super sure”. Then you bet on Horse A. You’re asked again who you think will win. You’re very very likely to say “Oh, Horse A. Obviously”. Nothing has changed except your perception of the odds, because consistency is so important (you committed to Horse A, therefore you remain with Horse A even if new info comes to light).
By the way, this is true for voting as well, implying that this phenomena is not because of the monetary benefit of winning a bet.
Example 2: You’re sitting on a beach, staring at the water or whatever. At any rate, you’re sedentary. Then, one of two things happens. 1) a person sits down nearby for a few minutes, then leaves their things and goes off to wander down the beach. or 2) A person sits down nearby for a few minutes, says “please watch my things” and then leaves their things and goes off to wander down the beach. Next, for both options, a “thief” comes by, snatches up the person’s little radio, or book or whatever and rushes off down the beach. Guess what the responses are from “you” (the sedentary beach sitter)?
For situation 1, only 4/20 people tried to stop the thief. In situation 2, 19/20 people sprinted after the thief yelling and trying to catch them. This pattern was true regardless if the thief was big and burly or small and weak, regardless if they were a male or a female, and regardless of the gender/muscularity of the sedentary beach sitter.
Why, you ask? Because those people had been asked to do a task, and, not wanting to be rude, had committed to it. Once committed, they felt personal responsibility for the items and were automatically pressured to be consistent with their commitment. Weird, right?
Example 3 (This one is really weird): Say you are searching for a solution to your terribly wounded toe. You try a lot of different medications, but the toe still basically hurts regardless. You are sad (aww). However, you happen upon a solution called “arm flailing” where you learn from a professional how to wave your arms to reduce the toe pain. Given simply this solution, you might not be very likely to pay money to the professional. BUT, if someone points out how ridiculous this solution is, you’re actually MORE likely to pay the money. Why? You know that if you go home, you’re very unlikely to come back and pay the money because the logic will sink in. But if you pay now, without thinking about it, you won’t be caught in your logic AND you’ll have committed, making you very likely to actually learn how to flail your arms. So in other words, your own mind can trick you into being consistent and committing.
This is sort of scary, because the whole point of pointing out flaws in the argument is to stop the person from making a bad decision, though pointing out the flaws might make them MORE likely to make that very same bad choice. Odd.
Example 4 (Otherwise known as “why marketing people are jerks”): Before Christmas, Easter, New Years, etc. there are always ads for toys that will “soon be in stores!”. Sometimes these ads are pretty cool. As a parent, your child sees one of these ads and begs for the toy (whatever it is, let’s just say a remote controlled car). Since the price is generally pretty low (holiday sale, 1/2 price while in stock!) you agree to “try and get the toy”. Now then, the week comes when you buy your gifts, so you find a toy store that advertises the remote controlled car and you walk in to buy the toy. When you go in, however, you find that they are all sold out! They’ve “been selling like hotcakes”, you are told, and this is true for every store that claims to sell this toy. You are sad, but the toy store also sells a slightly more expensive remote controlled robot, so you buy that for your child and leave.
Now then, AFTER the holiday is over, you see that the awesome original remote controlled car is back in stock. It’s not on sale anymore, but you remember promising to buy it for your kid so you go in and buy it at its higher price. You’re happy, because you got the toy the child wanted, the kid is happy because he now has 2 new toys, and the store is happy because they tricked you into coming into their store multiple times and buying multiple items, thereby making sure that they don’t only get money during the holiday seasons.
So what happened? The store purposefully only stocked a small number, but stocked MANY MANY alternative toys. Therefore, when you went in to the buy the original toy, you were still very likely to make a purchase, generally of an overpriced alternative. Additionally, because you committed to your child, you will also come back later and buy the original toy, only this time at full price. Thus the store has extended the seasons during which it makes money and has extorted more money from you than if you had simply come in for Christmas and bought the toy.
So just be warned of this in future gift giving instances.
Example 5 (how donations sometimes work): When asked a hypothetical question, you might often answer in a way that makes you seem very kind and generous. “If you were to see a poor orphan in the street, how much money would you give them?’ ‘Oh, maybe all the money in my wallet”.
Then, if asked “oh, okay, cool. Btw, I work for an orphanage. Would you like to make a donation?”, you are very likely to give money because you just said that you would if such a situation came up. Commitment and consistency are very strong motivators.
Example 6: Writing down a goal makes you more likely to complete that goal because writing something down is commitment. Also, this is why all subway napkins once said “10000 stores by 2010” or some such, because telling everyone your goal is a very strong motivator to be consistent.
Example 7 (scams): Apparently it’s been proven that schemes that say “You recently agreed to do [x] or buy [x], but never paid” are really effective because even if the person can’t remember ever agreeing (because they never did) they still feel strongly motivated to be consistent with the claimed past actions.
Example 8 (Inconveniences): Sometimes when you are looking for tickets to something you find out a lot of information about the event but spend a lot of time before you discover the price, which is often rather high. However, because you have devoted so much time to looking for the price, you’re still very likely to purchase the ticket because you committed to the event (mentally). This is basically known as “low balling”. Examples of low balling:
- car salesmen gets you very excited about a car and then “oops!”, turns out the car cost a couple thousand more than originally told (still likely to buy it, because you mentally committed)
- Standing in line to check the price on something makes you more likely to buy it (having committed) and more likely to actually enjoy it more afterwards (internal rationalization of time wasted)
- Getting told “if you save energy this month, you’re name will go into the paper as a conscientious citizen”, and then being told (at the end of the month) “Oh sorry, you’re name can’t be published after all!” is a very inexpensive way to get citizens to use less energy because having committed to this “saving energy” business, their entire self image changed to think of themselves as “conscientious citizens”
Other: Interestingly, commitment and consistency relates to child rearing. If you tell a child “this is a bad thing to do, I’ll punish you if you do it”, you can stop them from doing the action when they think they will be caught. But if you say “this action is wrong and I will be disappointed in you if you do it”, the child will emulate the parent’s wishes and will not do the action because it is not morally consistent with their inner feelings.
Other #2: Consistency goes up as age increases (past 50, it’s really hard to make someone act inconsistently). It also depends on how much individualism is valued in a culture. People from Asia, for example, are much less effected by low balling or what not than Americans, because they are more likely to view their actions as part of a “family self” not as reflecting their individual personality.
Defense: This author is kind of vague on the defense parts of his chapters. Alas.
Type 1: “stomach signs” —> watch for when you feel that pit-of-the-stomach feeling of “oh gosh, I REALLY don’t want to do this”. If you KNOW you don’t want to do something, it’s easier to resist the charm of being consistent, so learning to recognize this feeling is useful.
Type 2: “Heart of Hearts” —> It’s been shown that we experience emotion about a split second before we actually cognitively decide what to do about that emotion (Schachter-singer two factor theory, anyone?) So if you can learn to recognize the emotion before you decide “this emotion is wrong/right”, then you can more accurately decide what to do with the situation. Also, apparently, it helps to ask “If I were to make this choice again, what would I want to do?”
Type 3: Directly confront the person with logic. Say, “no, sorry, you quoted me a cheaper price and I came in here wanting to only pay that much money. I know you’re trying to convince me to spend more money, but we only agreed on the cheaper version of this car, so I’m sorry but I can’t buy this car”. But that’s pretty scary to do.
Summary:
- Once we have made a choice, we have pressures to behave consistently
- We accept inner responsibility when we have chosen to perform tasks in the absence of a strong outside pressure
- People try very hard to be consistent with past commitments, especially if these commitment are active, public, effortful, and viewed as internally motivated
- Low balling is effective
- We can listen to our “heart of hearts” or our stomachs to see if we really want to make the choice we have to make.
Sorry, that was really long. Tell me your thoughts in the comments (about the content of this chapter, not about how you hated how long this post was or something, haha)
![batman-inacardigan:
bogglelovesyou:
Please try not to beat yourself up today! You don’t have to be so hard on yourself!
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It’s called the spotlight effect in psychology! Teenagers (myself included) are a self-conscious bunch](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4ya0qI1cA1rr4zq1o1_1280.jpg)
