Cognitive consequences of forced compliance

Forced Compliance

Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance:

The article presented for the purposes of this paper, below, is written by two Stanford University scholars and focuses, as one can see from the above title, on "Cognitive Consequence of Forced Compliance." While the title sounds very academic, and is deeply pensive, one must ask exactly what this essay aims to do, and whether these concepts are as hard to understand and as complex as they may seem at first glance. Indeed, in order to answer these queries, one must summarize the various parts of the article, all of which is rendered below.

The article begins by asking a very important question, one which will shadow its entire analysis, and which states: What happens to a person' private opinion if he is forced to do or say something contrary to that opinion? Needless to say, this is a question that is answered differently by different people, a thing inherent in human nature, as no two persons will think exactly alike. However, there could be a consensus, as a subsequent facet to analysis on this question, the examination of which these writers undertake. They state that studies show that, contrary to the afore-stated belief, under some conditions, "the private opinion changes so as to bring it into closer correspondence with the overt behavior the person was forced to perform." In other words, if theory does not correspond to fact, or thought to action, a person will do his or her best in order to create symmetry between two intangibles, and reconcile his or her own changing nature with the preceding, individualized status quo.

At the end of this explanation as to how a person reacts when they are forced to comply, is simple reasoning: survival. Individual opinion will move and waver according to the medium in which an individual finds himself or herself. The authors go on to state, after describing other experiments focusing on the same question, and in relation to the above statements that,

"One would consequently expect to observe […] opinion change after a person has been forced or induced to say something contrary to his private opinion. Furthermore, since the pressure to reduce dissonance will be a function of the magnitude of the dissonance, the observed opinion change should be greatest when the pressure used to elicit the overt behavior is just sufficient to do it."

It is this statement, together with the focus question (i.e. What happens to a person' private opinion if he is forced to do or say something contrary to that opinion?) that the paper strives to analyze in more depth, and for this reason, the authors conduct their own experiment, the procedure of which is rendered in detail below.

Procedure

The authors begin the section by restating a point made previously; namely, that the experiment "was designed to test [the] derivation [between private and coerced opinions and their results] under controlled, laboratory conditions. For this reason, the experiment took a sample of 71 male students in an Introduction to Psychology course at the University.

The subsequent experiment design was also quite complex, as each subject was told, coerced, or forced to do certain things of which he had no previous knowledge, and to the wonder of both the experimenters and their subjects, the latter group did not protest. This enabled the experimenters to see how these male students could be coerced into doing something that they may not necessarily agree with or of which they may not have knowledge.

One of the procedures utilized is what is called "One and Twenty Dollar conditions." This section describes how and what the subject is told in regards to the experiment, and aims to see ho the latter reacts. As part of this part of the experiment answering the focus question, the experimenter would say, among other things, the following:

"The fellow who normally does this for us couldn't do it today -- he just phoned in, and something or other came up for him -- so we've been looking around for someone that we could hire to do it for us. You see, we've got another subject waiting [looks at watch] who is supposed to be in that other condition. Now Professor -, who is in charge of this experiment, suggested that perhaps we could take a chance on your doing it for us. I'll tell you what we had in mind: the thing is, if you could do it for us now, then of course you would know how to do it, and if something like this should ever come up again, that is, the regular fellow couldn't make it, and we had a subject scheduled, it would be very reassuring to us to know that we had somebody else we could call on who knew how to do it."

The point to be made here is, gain, to see how far the experimenter could push a subject to make a point, but also to see just how far one could go before one's opinions kicked in and he either stopped complying or reverted back to original beliefs. In the case presented here, with the subject analyzed in detail, it seems that he was able to fulfill all the requests that were thrown at him, and this may be a note on personality, but also a statement that can only supplant the one made above, stating that a persona will do anything to ensure 'symmetry' and reconciliation of opposing, unknown beliefs with existing opinions.

Summary of Design and Results

Perhaps this last section is also the most interesting. Before starting, however, it is useful to summarize the design in order to better quantify results. As the authors state, there are 20 subjects (Ss) in each of three conditions: control, one dollar and twenty dollars. In the control condition, the Ss were treated identically and never interacted with the last step of the experiment, namely talking to a girl chosen to whom they could explain what the experiment is about. The one-dollar condition states that Ss were hired for one dollar to tell a waiting subject that tasks, which were dull and boring, were very interesting and fun. The third condition, the 20 dollar condition, was one in which Ss were hired for $20 to tell the exact same thing to the girl, namely that tasks were enjoyable, when they really were quite boring.

The results of this interesting experiment show that an individual had to discuss four questions, which included how enjoyable the tasks were, how much was learned, what the scientific important was, and how one could participate in similar experiments. One would expect that with more reward the feedback to the female hire would be more and more positive. Yet the study conclusively found the following: