ent from or always to be trusted more than what we think about it.
However, the data are clear that our emotions and beliefs often do not
point in the same direction. Therefore, in situations involving a decision-
al commitment likely to have generated supporting rationalizations,
feelings may well provide the truer counsel. This would be especially
so when, as in the question of Sara’s happiness, the fundamental issue
at hand concerns an emotion (Wilson, 1989).
CHAPTER 4 (PAGES 114–166)
- The general evidence regarding the facilitative effect of canned
laughter on responses to humor comes from such studies as Smyth and
Fuller (1972), Fuller and Sheehy-Skeffinton (1974), and Nosanchuk and
Lightstone the last of which contains the indication that canned laughter
is most effective for poor material. - The researchers who infiltrated the Graham Crusade and who
provided the quote are Altheide and Johnson (1977). - See Bandura, Grusec, and Menlove (1967) and Bandura and Men-
love (1968) for full descriptions of the dog-phobia treatment.
Any reader who doubts that the seeming appropriateness of an action
is importantly influenced by the number of others performing it might
try a small experiment. Stand on a busy sidewalk, pick out an empty
spot in the sky or on a tall building, and stare at it for a full minute.
Very little will happen around you during that time—most people will
walk past without glancing up, and virtually no one will stop to stare
with you. Now, on the next day, go to the same place and bring along
four friends to look upward too. Within sixty seconds, a crowd of
passersby will have stopped to crane their necks skyward with the
group. For those pedestrians who do not join you, the pressure to look
up at least briefly will be nearly irresistible; if your experiment brings
the same results as the one performed by three New York social psycho-
logists, you and your friends will cause 80 percent of all passersby to
lift their gaze to your empty spot (Milgram, Bickman, and Berkowitz,
1967). - Other research besides O’Connor’s (1972) suggests that there are
two sides to the filmed-social-proof coin, however. The dramatic effect
of filmed depictions on what children find appropriate has been a source
of great distress for those concerned with frequent instances of violence
and aggression on television. Although the consequences of televised
violence on the aggressive actions of children are far from simple, the
data from a well-controlled experiment by psychologists Robert Liebert
and Robert Baron (1972) have an ominous look. Some children were
shown excerpts from a television program in which people intentionally
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 215