Just in time for the new year!
Last time we learned how reciprocity can force you to say yes. Now Dr. Cialdini investigates the strangely effective phenomenon of commitment and consistency. If you’ve ever felt the dread of knowing you’re cornered into doing something you don’t want to do, you’ve felt the power of these principles:
- Consistency “Aren’t you a healthy person? So put the Twinkie down.”
- Commitment “You already bought that gym membership, so use it.”
- Inception
Humans have a (frankly odd) desire to appear consistent to ourselves and others. Cialdini suggests this is because consistency signals rationality, good judgement, honesty, and mental wellness while inconsistency suggests irrationality, poor choices or memory of them, duplicity, and possible mental illness. So when we say—or are coaxed to say—we agree with something, say being interested in health, it’s much more difficult for us to then say no to someone selling a health product because that would make us inconsistent.
Once we’ve expressed a commitment, we often internalize it, essentially coming to believe that we are the kind of person we have committed to being. This is great when we try to be better people, committing to be more generous, healthy, friendly, etc. But either by knowing our commitments or making us commit to new ones can leave us vulnerable to consistency appeals. For example, if a charity or politician can get us to donate a small amount, we often will feel committed to helping their cause, and may if prompted donate more that we intended.
There are a number of tactics that utilize these forces of commitment and consistency to great effect:
- extract some small commitment from the target (a written one if possible)—when you ask for a second, larger favor, they will feel the strong need to be consistent with their previous commitment.
- Lowball them by making an inaccurately low offer, getting them to commit to it, then reveal the error and the actual (higher) price. They’ve already committed to the product, and to be consistent they’ll often accept the change.
- A written or recorded commitment gains special force because it is (or can be made) public. Thus having people write down agreements can enforce larger commitments in the same vein.
One rather strange result the researchers discovered involves the longevity of our commitments. They found that a strong external reason like a reward or threat only enforces a commitment as long as it is in effect, while a limited incentive makes us more likely to self-reinforce our commitment. Surprisingly, this means that a “just good enough” incentive can make people commit to a course of action, and when removed, they will come up with other reasons to maintain their commitment. Inception complete!
Hopefully we can harness the powerful forces of commitment and consistency to keep our new year’s resolutions!
