NSF GRANT ENABLES UA PSYCHOLOGIST TO STUDY THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - University of Arkansas psychologist Eric Knowles wants to make you an offer you can’t refuse. With a $163,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the reduction of social resistance, he may figure out how to do so.

Knowles researches social influence, particularly a phenomenon called the approach-avoidance conflict - the opposing reactions people feel when they’re faced with an offer, persuasive message or appeal. While people generally wish to satisfy requests and enjoy the benefits of doing so, they often feel reluctant to invest the effort or expense it takes to comply.

"Making a decision, even a small one, is a psychologically complicated act," Knowles said. "When we choose to do something, we’re weighing the benefits against the risks, assessing how the decision will affect us on multiple levels - our finances, our social independence, our self-esteem."

Until now, much of social influence scholarship has focused on making offers more persuasive by adding attractive features - attaching celebrity endorsements, compelling arguments or social alliances to the bargain. But Knowles intends to take the opposite approach, making offers more persuasive by minimizing people’s perception of the drawbacks and thereby reducing their resistance.

For the next two years, the NSF grant will fund Knowles, graduate research assistant Jay Linn and five undergraduate students as they pursue two programs of research aimed at reducing resistance.

The first program will consist of three experiments to test whether resistance can be distracted from the offer itself and redirected onto an inconsequential element of the offer. To accomplish such a distraction, Knowles has devised a technique called the Disrupt-then-Reframe (DTR) method of social influence.

In the DTR technique, the researcher presents an offer to subjects but inserts a minor verbal anomaly, followed by a rephrasing of the advantages of the offer. Knowles has tested the technique in past experiments in which psychology students went door to door, selling Christmas cards to benefit a charity.

The students rehearsed 4 different sales pitches, which were each delivered to 20 houses, resulting in a sample of 80 houses for the study. The control sales pitch stated the price of the cards as $3. The DTR sales pitch inserted a verbal disruption - stating the price in pennies (300 pennies) - followed by a reframed statement of the selling point - "It’s a bargain." The other two sales pitches offered just the disruption (300 pennies) or just the reframed selling point (it’s a bargain).

When students used the control sales pitch, 25 percent of households purchased cards. When the reframe-only sales pitch was offered, 30 percent of households bought them. Thirty-five percent of households bought cards when the disruption-only technique was used. But when students offered the DTR sales pitch, using both the disruption and the reframed selling point, sales doubled to 70 percent.

"People are naturally wary when they’re approached with an offer. Saying something in a peculiar way right before presenting the key selling point distracts their critical attention and gives them something other than the offer to focus that attention on," Knowles explained. "It uses up their resistance on something inconsequential, which leaves them more open to accepting the offer."

The three experiments funded by the NSF will attempt to discern how and why the DTR technique works. In particular, Knowles hopes to find out if the verbal disruption works by attracting people’s attention to the information that immediately follows it - so that the subjects in the Christmas card study honed in on "it’s a bargain" - or if it works by distracting their attention - so that they heard the selling point but didn’t have the critical resources free to evaluate it.

The second program of research, consisting of four experimental studies, aims to determine if resistance is a consumable resource. If so, Knowles theorizes that resistance could be diminished through use and replenished through rest.

"It’s possible that people have a finite amount of resistance to draw upon, just as they have a finite amount of energy with which to exercise," Knowles said. "So the question we want to answer is: if you resist one offer, does that leave you less able to resist the next one?"

The outcome of Knowles’ research will offer a deeper understanding about the way that people make decisions to accept or reject an offer. Knowing more about these processes may help people make better decisions. It may also help people devise more effective sales tactics and design more attractive offers.

Knowles believes that there are various ways to diminish a person’s resistance to an offer of which, distracting the resistance and consuming the resistance are just two examples.

"Reducing resistance doesn’t reduce a person’s intelligence. That person is still capable of making decisions," Knowles added. "The point of reducing resistance is just to diminish the negative aspects of the offer. It’s a way of taking away someone’s potential regrets."

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