The Psychology of Persuasion

Parallel form of human automatic action is aptly demonstrated in an experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer. A well known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason.People simply like to have reasons for what they do. Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine:  There was a queue for the copying machine. The experimenter asked if they could go in front of someone. The likelihood of being given permission to queue-jump depended on how the request was phrased:

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” (a meaningful reason) –  The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: 94%  of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line.

Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only:

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” (no reason) – 60% of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line.

At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the first request was the additional information provided by the words “because I’m in a rush.” But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word “because” and then, adding nothing new,merely restated the obvious: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? ". The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance.

 “Just Because” 

When we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. 

Credits : “ Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini (Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University).