People can hold good or bad opinions about themselves. These opinions relate to particular characteristics, competences and skills, or they can be of a more general nature. Psychologists are generally in agreement that such convictions are of importance, but controversy arises around the reasons why this is so. High levels of self-esteem obviously result in an individual experiencing positive emotions: it is pleasing to think of oneself as competent, humorous or physically attractive. This is why people try to find the good in themselves, applying an incredibly broad range of strategies and techniques that enable them to defend and even enhance their positive self-image. For example, they attribute success to themselves rather than others, while chalking failure up to others instead of themselves (e.g. Gilbert, 1995), they are eager to disclose any link they may have to famous people, which gives them pride and satisfaction (Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman & Sloan 1976), and they also exhibit tendencies towards bias in comparing themselves to others, maintaining their belief that they are better (Wills, 1981). It would, however, be an oversimplification to make the assumption that all of these efforts are based solely on the desire to experience pleasing emotions. Researchers emphasize that an affirmative view of oneself is a condition of effective task performance, as well as of making both short- and long-term plans (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Thus, striving to view oneself in even a slightly exaggerated positive light is adaptive. Yet another aspect is highlighted by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski (1991), authors of terror management theory. According to this notion, humans are the only entities on earth aware of their own mortality, this awareness being the source of fear and of threats. However, an individual can maintain the pretence of being immortal in both the literal and symbolic sense. Literal immortality is offered by the vast majority of religions, promising everlasting continuation of the soul and a second life after the one on earth. Symbolic immortality, on the other hand, is ensured by participation in broadly-taken culture, whose lifespan is far longer than that of an individual. High self-esteem allows individuals to feel they are valuable elements of culture (or a part of it, such as a nation or a group of a football club’s fans). Thus, maintaining positive beliefs about oneself is a means of reducing the terror that results from being aware that our life must, eventually, end. Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice (1990) do not concur with these assumptions. They do not directly dispute the theory itself that awareness of mortality gives rise to fear, but they rather feel that the bulk of people’s daily anxieties are grounded in the threat of exclusion from the community in which we function. A strong majority of communities accepts competent, honest and valuable individuals. The conviction that one fulfils these requirements leads to a weakening of the aforementioned fear. So, while Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski on the one hand, and Baumeister and Tice on the other, posit completely different sources for the majority of human beings’ fears, they are in agreement that the antidote to them is positive self-assessment.
Most people are concerned, not only with what they think of themselves, but also with how they are viewed by others. We try to manipulate the impression we make on others so that they think of us in a manner consistent with our own interests. Sometimes we desire for people to like us, other times we want them to fear us, or even to treat us as helpless and in need of immediate assistance (e.g. Leary & Allen, 2011). When others react in the way we desire, this also contributes to improving and maintaining our self-esteem.
In recent decades, an increasing amount of empirical data has begun to indicate that processes associated with one’s feeling of self-worth are not necessarily conscious ones. Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji (1995) propose applying the term ‘implicit self-esteem’. People are not aware of their special relationship to things associated closely with the “I”, even while those things are totally unrelated to their attitudes, skills and level of competence.
While the effects associated with people’s tendency to care for their positive self-image and to make the desired impression on others are strong and undisputed, the question is rarely addressed in research of how mechanisms associated with this can be used in successfully exerting influence over others. It appears that such studies are focused primarily on four social influence techniques: using the name of one’s interlocutor; emphasizing one’s incidental similarity to that person; drawing attention to discrepancies between publicly declared and actual behaviour; and exploiting the presence of a witness to the interaction. In this chapter I will discuss each of these techniques in turn.
Using the name of one’s interlocutor
When Napoleon’s army occupied the Netherlands in 1811, the emperor issued a decree ordering all residents of the country to officially register their surnames. Family names were not widespread at the time in the Netherlands but were the exclusive domain of people at the top of the social ladder. For many of those at the bottom of it, Napoleon’s decree must have seemed a needless extravagance. The Dutch thus began thinking up quite exotic surnames for themselves, such as: Naaktgeboren (Born Naked), Den Boef (Swindler) or Poepjes (Little Halfwit). While surnames may have seemed unnecessary in some countries and during some periods of history, since the dawn of human civilization no one has questioned the need to use first names. The status of an individual without a name can be compared to one stripped of honour, or even of humanity (Koole & Pelham, 2003). As a result, for many years a person’s name has borne exceptional significance.
Jozef Nuttin (1984) described his impressions from a holiday he took with his wife. At one moment he observed that some of the licence plates on cars passing him were evoking warm feelings. After thinking about it, he concluded that this was probably from the plates that contained the letters of his name or digits corresponding to his date of birth. This constatation served as a starting point for a sterling series of empirical studies in which Nuttin demonstrated that people do, in fact, exhibit an unusual preference for the letters that compose their name.
Further studies conducted around the world demonstrated that the first letters of a name in particular seem to have impressive power. It turns out that individual letters are liked more by people whose names begin with just those letters (Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997; Koole, Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 2001). In our experiments (Dolinski, 2005), the first letters of names were described by participants as having a more pleasing shape (perhaps a surprising conclusion) than letters that did not form a part of their own names. This effect was also observed in respect of letters printed from the commonplace computer programme Word for Windows (the fonts Courier and Times New Roman were used), as well as decorative letters, such as can be found at the beginnings of chapters in older volumes.
Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg and John Jones (2002) demonstrated that the initial letters of first names have an influence on professional careers and on the places that people inhabit. For example, among American den
tists there is a large number of people named Den nis (and vice versa, many people named Den nis are den tists), while a far greater number than chance would indicate of women named V irginia live in V irginia Beach. People with the first name or surname of S aint, more often than coincidence could explain, decide to take up residence in S aint Louis, S aint Paul or S aint Joseph. The special role of one’s first name is also attested to by the cocktail party effect.
During a cocktail party, people generally stand around in small groups, and in this intimate company discuss various things. The selectivity of top-down attention means that they can block out voices coming from other small groups, focusing on what someone in their immediate vicinity is saying. The din, often loud, bothers them a bit, but they are able to tune it out to such a degree that, in a sense, they don’t hear it. However, if their own name pops up in this ignored murmur, not only do they register it immediately, but they also begin listening to what the person who has just used their name is saying. People are thus both ignoring and not (completely) ignoring this din at the same time: one’s own name is a stimulus so strong that it has the fascinating power to divert others’ attention. In the context of this chapter, the cocktail party effect constitutes an outstanding example of the importance of one’s own name. From a purely practical perspective, it advises us to avoid speaking the name of the person we would like to gossip about. We mustn’t be deceived by the fact that Christine is standing some distance from us and seems to be completely absorbed in her own, private conversation.
TECHNIQUES OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE
The psychology of gaining compliance
Dariusz Dolinski
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