of kind treatment, and statements sympathetic to communism. The
hope was that the Chinese would want such letters to surface and
would, therefore, allow their delivery. Of course, the Chinese were
happy to cooperate because those letters served their interests mar-
velously. First, their worldwide propaganda effort benefited greatly
from the appearance of pro-Communist statements by American ser-
vicemen. Second, in the service of prisoner indoctrination, they had,
without raising a finger of physical force, gotten many men to go on
record as supporting the Chinese cause.
A similar technique involved political essay contests that were regu-
larly held in camp. The prizes for winning were invariably small—a
few cigarettes or a bit of fruit—but were sufficiently scarce that they
generated a lot of interest from the men. Usually the winning essay was
one that took a solidly pro-Communist stand...but not always. The
Chinese were wise enough to realize that most of the prisoners would
not enter a contest that they could win only by writing a Communist
tract. And the Chinese were clever enough to know how to plant small
commitments to communism in the men that could be nurtured into
later bloom. So the prize was occasionally given to an essay that gener-
ally supported the United States but that bowed once or twice to the
Chinese view. The effects of this strategy were exactly what the Chinese
wanted. The men continued to participate voluntarily in the contests
because they saw that they could win with an essay highly favorable
to their own country. But perhaps without realizing it, they began to
shade their essays a bit toward communism in order to have a better
chance of winning. The Chinese were ready to pounce on any concession
to Communist dogma and to bring consistency pressures to bear upon
it. In the case of a written declaration within a voluntary essay, they
had a perfect commitment from which to build toward collaboration
and conversion.
Other compliance professionals also know about the committing
power of written statements. The enormously successful Amway Cor-
poration, for instance, has hit upon a way to spur their sales personnel
to greater and greater accomplishments. Members of the staff are asked
to set individual sales goals and commit themselves to those goals by
personally recording them on paper:
One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down.
Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve
got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. There
is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and60 / Influence