Compliance (psychology)

Within the field of psychology, the term compliance is used to identify the process of changing personal behavior in response to a request from another individual. Requests may be stated verbally, or they may be nonverbally communicated by the actions of the other person. Compliance occurs within a range of relationships, such as parent and child, teacher and student, physician and patient, and salesperson and client. It may also involve groups of people. Factors involved in group compliance include the strength and size of the group, the similarities or differences of group members, and the immediacy of the situation. The terms obedience and conformity are closely related to compliance, with obedience being heavily influenced by the authority of the individual requesting the behavioral change and conformity signifying the need to cohere with a social majority. While compliance may occur in conjunction with authority, the goal in compliance is a voluntary agreement to change rather than a response to an order to change. Compliance generally occurs within a social setting and may, therefore, be influenced by the fact that other people are present to witness the action. Social psychologists maintain that compliance is a useful tool for succeeding in the social milieu, and they have spent a good deal of time studying the impact of social influences on the process of compliance.

Background

In the mid-twentieth century, Polish American psychologist Solomon Asch conducted pioneering work in the field of social psychology. Employing the tenets of Gestalt psychology, Asch set out to determine perceived differences between physical and social reality. He did this in 1951 by having his test participants, fifty male Swarthmore College students, examine strings of different lengths and then take part in group discussions about the size of the strings. Unbeknown to each test participant, the rest of the group, which varied in size, had agreed beforehand to give the same obviously incorrect response in twelve out of eighteen discussions. Among participants in these twelve discussions, Asch found that even though participants believed the group assessment of the sizes to be wrong, thirty-seven out of fifty of them complied with the incorrect assessments of the group at least once.

In the early 1960s, Yale University social psychologist Stanley Milgram built on Asch’s work to examine the concept of obedience within a social setting. In twenty-five separate studies, he asked individuals to deliver alleged electric shocks of increasing intensity to participants who gave wrong answers, demonstrating that individuals were often willing to blindly inflict pain on others simply because they were told to do so or were convinced that their actions were for the greater good. The Milgram experiment helped to explain why humans are capable of "blind obedience" to authority. Milgram’s findings, which he published in his 1974 book Obedience to Authority, provided much of the basis for contemporary work in the field of compliance.

When compliance occurs within the context of group change, a number of factors must be considered. First, it is necessary to consider how important belonging to the group is to the individual being asked to change their behavior. In cases where the needs of the group are paramount, compliance is more likely than when it is not of vital importance. For instance, a fraternity or sorority member is more likely to comply with requests from peers within the group than with those of an acquaintance known only from class who plays only a small role in the individual’s life. Immediacy becomes a major factor in compliance because it is more important to deal with situations at hand than with events occurring at a distance. It is also easier for others to exert social pressure that encourages compliance when they are nearby. Group size is a major element of compliance because large groups have more power than small groups, and even small groups have more power to influence change than individuals. Furthermore, it is far easier to replace a person who refuses to comply in a large group than in a small one. Individuals are also more likely to comply with requests from those with whom they share affinity than with others.

Overview

A good deal of the research on compliance has dealt with the techniques needed to convince others to do what is asked of them. Thus, social scientists have used the term compliance gaining to describe the conscious actions involved in convincing an individual to change their behavior. The term was first used in the field of social psychology, but it has since been widely used in communication.

One of the major influences on compliance is commitment. In 1978, psychologist and marketing professor Robert Cialdini invited students to take part in a study that was scheduled to take place at 7:00 a.m. The majority of Cialdini’s students refused outright. When he requested that they participate in the study without naming a time, most of them agreed to his request. Even though the students later discovered the time of the study and were offered the chance to withdraw, 95 percent of them turned up as requested. Cialdini concluded that an initial compliance to participate in the study made the students feel honor bound to actually do so.

Another element in the willingness to comply with requests involves the process of winning the approval of another person in order to lay the necessary groundwork. Approval may be achieved by techniques such as flattering them, pretending to agree with whatever they say, or displaying characteristics that are strongly admired by the other person.

Social scientists have also identified the norm-of-reciprocity technique as an influence on compliance. The technique is based on the notion that getting a person to agree with a request is more likely if the person making the request has ostensibly agreed to a previous request proffered by their target.

Some of the most commonly used techniques in compliance gaining are those related to the process of offering items for sale to potential buyers, including the low-ball technique, the foot-in-the-door technique, and the door-in-the-face technique. The low-ball technique is used to get a customer to agree to purchase an item at a stated bargain price, and then reoffering the item at a higher "actual" price. Sometimes upgrades or enhancements are offered with the higher price in order to justify the increase. Either way, as Cialdini’s 1978 experiment showed, the customer often feels honor bound to complete the purchase. The foot-in-the-door technique depends on first getting the other person to agree to a simple request before submitting additional requests. The idea behind the technique is that once a person agrees the first time, they will be more amenable to similar requests. The door-in-the-face technique is based on the assumption that individuals who slam the door on a first request may respond more positively to a second request that is viewed as less threatening. Compliance is usually achieved using this method only when both requests are similar and when compliance results from feeling the need not to appear to be one who always refuses reasonable requests.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided social scientists ample opportunity to study compliance behaviors among different groups. Mental health factors, such as stress and anxiety or fear of the virus, were found to mediate compliance behaviors. Additionally, individuals with higher levels of conspiracy beliefs were less likely to comply with behavioral protocols.

Bibliography

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