Psychological Analysis and the Psychology of Sales Technique

Sociocultural level of analysis:

One particular method used at the sociocultural level of analysis is experimentation. This refers to the practice of manipulating variables to generate statistically analyzable data. One of the main principles of the Social L.O.A is the scientific approach to understanding and explaning how mental processes are influenced by others, which makes experimentation necessary because these psychologists needs a scientific explanation for social influences on the mental process.    

Section B:

Discuss the use of two compliance techniques:

The first compliance technique I will discuss is “foot in the door”. Foot in the door refers to when an experimenter first asks the subject a modest request, in an effort to get them to agree to a bigger request that follows the modest request. An example of this would be if a solicitor asked a bystander to sign a petition. This is a pretty modest request that takes a short period of time. Weeks later, this same solicitor could ask the bystander to make a donation for the cause of the petition in which he or she signed weeks earlier. This is an example of foot in the door because the solicitor goes from a small request to a bigger request. A supporting study of foot in the door would be Sherman’s 1980 study. Sherman asked volunteers to spend 3 hours collecting for the American Cancer Society. Three days later, a second experimenter called the same people and actually requested help for this organization. Of the people who responded to the earlier request, 31% agreed to help, which was much higher than the 4% of a similar group of people who were approached directly with the second request. One explanation of this is the self-perception theory. In 1972, Bem hypothesized that people infer their inner states from their behavior and the situation in which the behavior occurred, which basically means that people develop their attitudes by observing their own behavior and concluding what attitudes caused them.

        The second compliance technique that I will discuss is Low balling. Low balling is a two-step technique where the persuader secures agreement with the targeted request, but then reveals hidden costs. A commonly known example is how many companies will offer you an “all expense” paid free vacation, but they will often include hidden fees and will sometimes make you sit through a long seminar that will attempt to make you buy something else. The supporting study of this compliance technique is one done by Cialdini in 1978. He sked students whether they would participate in a psychology experiment that started at 7 in the morning and, like expected, most people refused. He then asked another group of people if they would participate in a psychology experiment without giving a time and many of them agreed. Later, they were told that it started at 7am and they could drop out if they wanted to, yet 95% of the people still showed up. An explanation of why this occurs can be found in something called Cognitive dissonance theory. This theory states people want their attitudes and behaviors to be consistent of each other. It applies because due to them already agreeing to participate in the experiment their attitude and behavior were not negative at the early start time of this experiment.