INFLUENCE: The Principle of Authority

"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini

Authority

• Re: Stanley Milgram shock experiment: What could make us do such things? Milgram is sure he knows the answer. It has to do, he says, with a deep-seated sense of duty to authority within us all.
• Milgram: "It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study."
• We are trained from birth that obedience to proper authority is right and disobedience is wrong.
• We rarely agonize over the pros and cons of authority's demands. In fact, our obedience frequently takes place in a click, whirr fashion with little or no conscience deliberation. Information from a recognized authority can provide us a valuable shortcut for deciding how to act in a situation.
• Once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience. Although such mindless obedience leads us to appropriate action in the great majority of cases, there will be conspicuous exceptions - because we are reacting rather than thinking.
• Once a legitimate authority has given an order, subordinates stop thinking in the situation and start reacting.
• Re: Robert Young Sanka Commercial: Ability to use the influence of the Authority principle without ever providing a real authority. The appearance of authority was enough.
• When in a click, whirr mode, we are often as vulnerable to the symbols of authority as to the substance.
• Compliance professionals who are short on substance: Con artists, for example, drape themselves with the titles, clothes, and trappings of authority. They love nothing more than to emerge elegantly dressed from a fine automobile and to introduce themselves to their prospective "mark" as Doctor or Judge or Professor or Commissioner Someone. They understand that when they are so equipped, their chances for compliance are greatly increased.
• Re Titles: Titles are simultaneously the most difficult and easiest symbols of authority to acquire. To earn one normally takes years of work and achievement. Yet it is possible for somebody who has put in none of this effort to adopt the mere label and receive a kind of automatic deference.
• Our actions are frequently more influenced by a title than by the nature of the person claiming it.
• Highly trained and skilled nurses were not using that training or skill sufficiently to check on a doctor's judgement; instead, when confronted with a physicians directives, they would simply defer.
• Regardless of the type of request, many more people obeyed the requestor when he wore the guard costume.
• Nearly all the pedestrians complied with his directive when he had worn the guard costume, but fewer than 1/2 did so when he dressed normally.
• Motorists would wait significantly longer before honking their horns at a new, luxury car stopped in front of a green traffic light than at an older, economy model.
• People were unable to predict correctly how they or others would react to authority influence. In each instance, the effect of such influence was grossly underestimated. This property of authority status may account for much of its success as a compliance device. Not only does it work forcefully on us, but it also does so unexpectedly.
• Because we typically misperceive the profound impact of authority (and its symbols) on our actions, we are at the disadvantage of being insufficiently cautious about its presence in compliance situations.
• Isn't it fascinating how, when we are whirring along, what is obvious often doesn't matter unless we pay specific attention to it?
• A tactic compliance practitioners use to assure us of their sincerity: They will seem to argue to a degree against their own interests. Correctly done, this can be a subtly effective device for proving their honesty. Perhaps they will mention a small shortcoming in their position or product. Invariably, though, the drawback will be a secondary one that is easily overcome by more significant advantages. By establishing their basic truthfulness on minor issues, the compliance professionals who use this ploy can then be more believable when stressing the important aspects of their argument.
• Who, after all, is more believable than a demonstrated expert of proven sincerity? Vincent the waiter: Much of his profit came from an apparent lack of concern for personal profit. Seeming to argue against his financial interests served those interests extremely well.