466 CHAPTER 12
this technique that is related to the foot-in-the-door technique, once a commitment is made, the
cost of that commitment is increased. (In the sense used here, cost does not necessarily mean
money; cost can also mean time, effort, or other kinds of sacrifices.) A common example of this
is the way in which cable companies will advertise low prices in order to get people to sign up
for their particular service. Once the service is established, the consumer is often unpleasantly
surprised by the number of additional fees, surcharges, and taxes added onto the bill.
A more common example will occur to anyone who has ever bought a car. The
commitment to buy the car at one low price is quickly followed by the addition of other
costs: extended warranties, additional options, taxes and fees, and so on, causing the
buyer to spend more money than originally intended.
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN COMPLIANCE Cultural differences exist in people’s suscep-
tibility to these techniques. For the foot-in-the door technique in particular, research has
shown that people in individualistic cultures (such as the United States) are more likely to
comply with the second request than are people in collectivistic cultures (such as Japan). The
research suggests that people in collectivistic cultures are not as concerned with being con-
sistent with previous behavior because they are less focused on their inner motivation than
are people in individualistic cultures, who are more concerned with their inner motives and
consistency (Cialdini et al., 1999; Petrova et al., 2007). to Learning Objective 13.13.
The concept of compliance, along with conformity, also figures heavily in cult behavior,
and both concepts can interfere with thinking critically about cult activities. The APA Goal 2:
Scientific Reasoning and Critical Thinking feature has more information about cults.Obedience
12.4 Identify factors that make obedience more likely.
There is a difference between the concepts of compliance, which is agreeing to change one’s
behavior because someone else asks for the change, and obedience, which is changing one’s
behavior at the direct order of an authority figure. A salesperson who wants a person to buy a
car has no real power to force that person to buy, but an authority figure is a person with social
power—such as a police officer, a teacher, or a work supervisor—who has the right to demand
certain behavior from the people under the authority figure’s command or supervision.
How far will people go in obeying the commands of an authority figure? What fac-
tors make obedience more or less likely? These are some of the questions that researchers
have been investigating for many years. The answers to these questions became very
important not only to researchers but also to people everywhere after the atrocities com-
mitted by the soldiers in Nazi Germany—soldiers who were “just following orders.”
MILGRAM’S SHOCKING RESEARCH In what is now a classic study, social psychologist
Stanley Milgram set out to find answers to these questions. He was aware of Asch’s studies
of conformity and wondered how much impact social influence could have on a behavior
that was more meaningful than judging the length of lines on cards. He designed what has
become one of the most famous (even notorious) experiments in the history of psychology.
Through ads placed in the local newspaper, Milgram recruited people who were
told that they would be participating in an experiment to test the effects of punishment
on learning behavior (Milgram, 1963, 1974). Although there were several different forms
of this experiment with different participants, the basic premise was the same: The par-
ticipants believed that they had randomly been assigned to either the “teacher” role or
the “learner” role, when in fact the learner was a confederate already aware of the situa-
tion. The task for the learner was a simple memory test for paired words.
The teacher was seated in front of a machine through which the shocks would be admin-
istered and the level of the shocks changed. (See Figure 12. 2 .) For each mistake made by the
learner, the teacher was instructed to increase the level of shock by 15 volts. The learner (who
obedience was not actually shocked) followed a carefully arranged script by pounding on the wall and
changing one’s behavior at the
command of an authority figure. notorious: widely and unfavorably known.