The belief to have fixed or malleable traits and help giving: implicit theories and sequential social influence techniques

• Authors: Gamian-Wilk Malgorzata , Lachowicz-Tabaczek Kinga
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Two sequential social influence techniques, the foot-in-the-door and the door-in-the-face, seem to be symmetrical, but there are different moderators and quite different mechanisms underlying each of the strategies. What links both techniques is the social interaction between a person presenting a sequence of requests and an interlocutor. The techniques' effectiveness depends on the course and perception of the interaction and the difficulty of requests in the sequence. The aim of the article was to verify various mechanisms of incremental (individuals who believe in malleable personality) and entity theorists (individuals who believe in fixed traits) compliance with the FITD and the DITF techniques. In a series of four studies it was shown that incremental theorists comply the FITD technique to a greater extend especially when a sequence of requests meets their mastery style of behavior thus means an interesting challenge to undertake or opportunity to deepen contact with a newly met person. Entity theorists are more prone to the DITF strategy as their helpless style of behavior and sense of guilt are triggered, thus a sequence of decreasing in magnitude demands is perceived as less threatening.

Keywords

EN

COMPLIANCE; IMPLICIT THEORIES; INTERACTION DYNAMICS; SOCIAL INFLUENCE TECHNIQUES

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 85-100
• Physical description: source-id: PPB_40_2\9480275U402WW3R3.xml
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Gamian-Wilk Malgorzata

author

Lachowicz-Tabaczek Kinga

• Malgorzata Gamian-Wilk, University of Lower Silesia, ul. Strzegomska 55, 53-611 Wroclaw, Poland

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Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11PLAAAA091231

DOI

10.2478/s10059-009-0009-z