Introducing the Compliance Professionals
And even more on their helpful elephantine enabler sitting largely unseen in the middle of our common living room
Introduction
The last post provided an explanation of the recent and ongoing, saliently irrational behavior of much of mankind in terms of their level of ‘hypnotic’ susceptibility, and provided considerable evidence from the scientific literature that the basic mechanism behind the phenomenon is constantly operative and is largely ‘bred in the bone’. Besides looking at this basic mechanism from a slightly different perspective, this current post will also relate how, according to psychology, this hard-wired human characteristic is consciously utilized by parts of the human populace to gainfully obtain involuntary compliance from their fellows.
The psychologist/behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman in his Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), and the social psychologist Robert Cialdini in his Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion (2021, 4th edition), provide further scientific insight into how built-in, involuntary ‘hypnotic’ susceptibility to outside influence can affect human thinking and human action. Unlike Hilgard and Desmet, however, both of these authors assume that this susceptibility to intrusive outside influence affects all individuals in human populations to more or less the same degree. Ironically, Kahneman and Cialdini’s generalizing assumption appears to be the result of their being academic specialists.
Kahneman and Dual-Process Human Thinking
Using the terminology of Stanovich and West (2000), Kahneman breaks down human thinking into two basic systems:
System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.
System 1, according to Kahneman, is primary in the sense that it: (1) provides all of the data inputs available to the slower System 2; (2) evolved in humankind earlier in human history than System 2, and (3) includes the ‘hard-wired’ instinctual abilities that we share with other animals. We are born with some of these System 1 abilities and responses, while others are skills and responses that become permanently imprinted into us over time with learning and repeated practice. Here are some of the examples that Kahneman provides as examples of System 1 thinking in action:
· Detect that one object is more distant than another.
· Orient to the source of a sudden sound.
· Complete the phrase “bread and …”
· Make a “disgust face” when shown a horrible picture.
· Detect hostility in a voice.
· Answer to 2 + 2 = ?
· Read words on large billboards.
· Drive a car on an empty road.
· Find a strong move in chess (if you are a chess master).
· Understand simple sentences.
All of these System 1 activities are automatic and unconscious, and cannot be intentionally blocked out of the perception and thinking process once such abilities are present, or once such skills are obtained. They are therefore involuntary, much like the physical knee-jerk response. For example, once you have learned to read, it is impossible thereafter to see the printed letters that constitute the word “milk” without simultaneously having the concept of “milk” come into your mind.
Both System 1 and System 2 thinking require attention to operate, according to Kahneman. Because System 1 has (evolutionarily-derived) precedence in using up the attention available to a person, however, System 2 processes are often weakened and hindered by an attention deficit created by a busy System 1. Among other things, this simple observation explains why quiet libraries and orderly classrooms are far more conducive to learning, a System 2-intensive process, than are more chaotic and less structured learning environments.
While automatic ‘intuitive’ or ‘instinctive’ System 1 thinking ordinarily works easily, rapidly, and well for normal or usual events occurring in the environment, System 2 thinking functions like a slower ‘lower gear’ that permits laborious generation of custom, more appropriate responses to novel or unusual occurrences in the environment. When it has enough information, attention (i.e., enough dopamine), and time to function sufficiently, System 2 thinking monitors System 1 responses for errors in its unexamined, more rapid and unconscious judgments and decisions.
Stanovich and West (2000) refer to System 1 thinking as “evolutionary rationality” because it functions (and has functioned) to support the mass survival of the human species over the evolutionary long run, while the “normative rationality” of System 2 largely supports the survival of individuals over the shorter interval of their individual lifetimes. Stanovich and West’s suggestive choice of terminology for System 1 thinking notwithstanding, recall that the previous post provided some evidence that a later mutation in the genes controlling the COMT enzyme also was naturally selected during human evolution to develop and strengthen System 2 normative rationality.
Unfortunately, the default, unconscious nature of System 1 evolutionary rationality is often designedly used by outside agents to exploit the people around them. This human vulnerability is amplified by the fact that error-prone System 1, susceptible to suggestion and manipulation, dominates most human thinking – again, thanks to natural evolution. A useful analogy is to think of these outside agents as viruses that enter the minds of others through the unconscious, undefended pathways of System 1 thinking, to take at least partial control of the actions and resources of those people.
Cialdini’s Self-Defense Manual for Instinctual Humanity: Forewarned is Forearmed
Cialdini wrote his book, Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion (2021, 4th edition) primarily as a self-defense manual for ‘Everyman’. The book describes and explains techniques that “compliance professionals” like salesmen, advertisers, politicians, theologians, and government agencies routinely use to bypass more careful System 2 human thinking abilities in order gainfully influence buyers, voters, religion adherents, and citizens to comply with their suggestions. Generally speaking, “compliance professionals” do this by employing the knee-jerk, unconscious perceptions and reaction patterns of hard-wired System 1 to gain everyman’s compliance to suggestions without any hindrance originating from System 2 monitoring of System 1 data inputs and System 1 operations. By becoming familiar with the tactics and strategies compliance professionals employ to get people to act as the professionals desire, Cialdini hopes that those being exposed to manipulation will learn when it is appropriate to be more cautious and circumspect about those they encounter.
As did Kahneman in his book, Cialdini starts off his own text by explaining that humans, like animals, respond to certain stimuli automatically, following the System 1 mode of thinking:
· Ethologists, researchers who study animal behavior in the natural environment, have noticed that among many animal species, behavior often occurs in rigid and mechanical patterns. Called fixed-action patterns, these mechanical sequences are noteworthy in their similarity to certain automatic (click, run) responses by humans. For both humans and subhumans [other animals], the automatic-behavior patterns tend to be triggered by a single feature of the relevant information in the situation. This single feature, or trigger feature, can often prove valuable by allowing an individual to decide on a correct course of action without having to analyze carefully and completely each of the other pieces of information in the situation.
· The advantage of such shortcut responding lies in its efficiency and economy; by reacting automatically to a normally informative trigger feature, an individual preserves crucial time, energy, and mental capacity. The disadvantage of such responding lies in its vulnerability to silly and costly mistakes; by reacting to only a piece of the available information (even a usually predictive piece), an individual increases the chances of error, especially when responding in an automatic, mindless fashion. The chances of error increase even further when other individuals seek to profit by arranging (through manipulation of trigger features) to stimulate a desired behavior at inappropriate times. [Italics have been added.]
· Much of the compliance process (wherein one person is spurred to comply with another person’s request) can be understood in terms of a human tendency for automatic, shortcut responding. Most of us have developed a set of trigger features for compliance — that is, specific pieces of information that normally tell us when compliance with a request is likely to be correct and beneficial. Each of these trigger features for compliance can be used like a lever (of influence) to move people to agree with requests.
Those Influential Trigger Features
Like Cialdini says, inborn or nurture-ingrained trigger features and their corresponding fixed action patterns, on the average over time, serve very good purposes. In order to explain to his readers when to look out for intentional misuse of human trigger features and their fixed action patterns by “compliance professionals”, Cialdini classifies the human trigger features into seven categories:
1. Reciprocation;
2. Liking;
3. Social proof;
4. Authority;
5. Scarcity;
6. Commitment and consistency; and,
7. Unity.
Reciprocation. According to anthropologists and sociologists, says Cialdini, the reciprocation impulse functions extremely strongly in all humans. A gift of any sort involuntarily elicits an involuntary fixed action pattern; i.e., the strong desire on the part of the recipient to eventually return an equal or greater favor. So strong is the influence of this trigger feature, it reliably overcomes dislike for the giver, and imposes a distinct feeling of obligation on the receiver even when a bestowed gift or favor is uninvited or unwanted. Accordingly, one very frequently used tactic employed by compliance professionals is to give something before asking for compliance.
Liking. Because people dependably comply with the requests of people they like, compliance professionals generally strive to maximize their own likeability. One important factor underlying the trigger feature of likeability is physical attractiveness.
Cialdini reports:
Although it has long been suspected that physical beauty provides an advantage in social interaction, research indicates the advantage may be greater than supposed. Physical attractiveness engenders a halo effect that leads to the assignment (of other traits such as talent, kindness, and intelligence). As a result, attractive people are more persuasive both in terms of getting what they request and changing others’ attitudes.
Similarity of attitude, clothing, hairstyle, speech, body movements, and interests also elicits liking and promotes the fixed action pattern of compliance from others. While basically improving genetic physical attractiveness is impossible, permanently or temporarily adjusting outward markers of similarity in order to increase influence and gain compliance is relatively easy. For example, a car salesman only has to notice an outdoor sportsman’s decal on a potential buyer’s old car window to obtain a useful sales-related basis for simulating a similar interest in the same outdoor sport in order to increase chances of a successful car sale.
Finally, in a technique even easier to implement than mimicking the personal attributes of a person to be influenced, Cialdini observes that research shows that when a compliance professional directs praise and compliments to an individual of interest, liking of the flattering professional is reliably enhanced, along with probability of compliance from the flattered.
Social Proof (‘Consensus’ or ‘Mass Formation’ by Yet Another Name). Another quick System 1 short cut substitute for slow and effortful System 2 analysis of a problematic situation is something Cialdini has defined as “social proof”. When pressed by ambiguous, hard to resolve circumstances, people look around to see how others are responding to the problem concerned, and then, instead of ‘thinking it out’, follow the fixed action pattern of accepting the actions of the others as correct. This acceptance, this following the lead of others, is most assured the greater the number of people taking a particular attitude and action. Greater numbers suggest to people that the attitude and action are: 1) more valid, 2) more feasible, and 3) socially-acceptable.
Another important factor strengthening the action of this System 1 trigger feature is similarity to the others taking the mass action concerned. Cialdini states that research shows that people most often conform to the actions of comparable others. This pronounced tendency is used by Cialdini and other researchers to explain why highly publicized suicides, for example, are generally followed soon thereafter by an increased spate of similar suicides.
Authority. Beginning in childhood, nearly all of us are trained by our various guardians to obey legitimate authorities until the point that various signals or cues of authority, trigger features, automatically insure the fixed action pattern of compliance from us. At least while young, relatively ignorant, and inexperienced, this System 1 response is usually beneficial because genuine authorities generally possess greater levels of knowledge, wisdom, and power than those stimulated to obey.
As with animal trigger features, people automatically tend to comply with purported authority upon simple perception of cues consistently associated with authority. Titles, diplomas, uniforms (including business suits), or prestige belongings (e.g., luxury automobiles) are enough to signal to a System 1-dominated thinker that they have come into the presence of genuine authority. These different external cues of genuine authority are, of course and unfortunately, very easily counterfeited or mimicked by dishonest compliance professionals.
Scarcity (Loss Aversion). As Kahneman explains, and Cialdini repeats, loss aversion or scarcity is another very strong human trigger feature. In System 1 of human thinking, losses always figure more strongly than gains. This is because for all of human evolutionary history, the loss of any scarce essential resource like food, shelter, clothing, a mate or other helpers, frequently could lead to death.
Compliance professionals, especially salesmen, marketers, theologians, politicians, and environmentalists, easily engage this particular trigger feature by telling people that if they don’t “act now”, they will lose something of great survival value. Two examples of the use by authority figures of the scarcity/loss aversion trigger feature are graphically referenced below. The lefthand movie poster refers to Senator Al Gore’s movie supporting the global warming (now called “global climate change”) narrative, while the righthand image refers to President Joe Biden’s Winter 2021 speech given to promote further COVID19 vaccine and vaccine booster injections across the American populace.
Commitment and Consistency. Another hard-wired System 1 trigger feature set that can be exploited by compliance professionals is the human pursuit and maintenance of commitment and consistency. Cialdini explains that there are three evolutionarily-significant advantages to the commitment and consistency ingrained in most humans:
(1) Personal consistency makes daily interaction with others potentially less dangerous for those others;
(2) Consistent conduct is, on the average, more energy-, resource-, and time-efficient, and is therefore generally a beneficial approach to take towards daily life; and
(3) Consistency constitutes a System 1 shortcut that “…reduces the cognitive load of making a decision” about a current situation that is similar to those already encountered in the past.
Compliance professionals recognize that after a person makes a commitment, they will, more often than not, make later decisions that are consistent with this earlier commitment. This is especially true when the commitment is known to be currently affecting personal actions, and was publicly, effortfully, and voluntarily made in the first place. Any kind of early commitment a compliance professional can obtain from his potential client that is consistent with the ultimate goal of the compliance professional, then, is very helpful in eventually obtaining that professional’s final compliance goal.
Moreover, the consistency and commitment trigger feature exposes people to not only the possibly harmful influence of manipulative compliance professionals, but also to the harmful influence of earlier personal decision errors. As Cialdini writes:
Commitment decisions, even erroneous ones, have a tendency to be self-perpetuating because they can “grow their own legs.” That is, people often add new reasons and justifications to support the wisdom of commitments they have already made. As a consequence, some commitments remain in effect long after the conditions that spurred them have changed.
This last corollary of the commitment and consistency trigger feature explains why personal and public policy commitments made in initial error are seldom, if ever, quickly retracted or corrected. System 1 thinking is exceedingly stubborn about admitting error and changing course, thanks to the nature of the commitment and consistency fixed action pattern.
I found it extremely interesting in this last regard to learn that Denmark, the country with the lowest apparent average ‘hypnotic’ susceptibility level in the world (and, accordingly, the highest concentration of COMT (Met,Met) bearers/relatively strong System 2 thinkers in its population), was the first nation in the world to suspend its COVID19 vaccination program. (The wheels of System 2 thinking turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.)
Unity. Cialdini added a seventh trigger feature category, unity, to his classification scheme in the last edition of his text. I am at a loss to see how this added category is any different in main principle from his original category of “liking”, however. The following passages taken verbatim from his summary on this subject may show the reader why I am puzzled about this proposed augmentation of his original system of six trigger features and fixed action patterns:
People say yes to someone they consider one of them. The experience of “we”-ness (unity) with others is about shared identities—tribe-like categories that individuals use to define themselves and their groups, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and family, as well as political and religious affiliations. Research into “we”-groups has produced three general conclusions.
Members of these groups favor the outcomes and welfare of fellow members over those of nonmembers. “We”-group members also use the preferences and actions of fellow members to guide their own, which enhances group solidarity. Finally, such partisan tendencies have arisen, evolutionarily, as ways to advantage our “we”-groups and, ultimately, ourselves. These three constants have surfaced in a wide range of domains, including business, politics, sports, and personal
relationships. The perception of belonging together with others is one fundamental factor leading to feelings of “we”-ness. This perception is generated by commonalities of kinship (amount of genetic overlap) as well as by commonalities of place (including one’s home, locality, and region).
The experience of acting together in unison or coordination is a second fundamental factor leading to a sense of unity with others. Shared musical experience is one way people can act together and feel consequent unity. Other ways involve repeated reciprocal exchange, joint suffering, and co-creation. It may be possible to use the unifying effects of belonging together and acting together to increase the odds of getting together as a species. It would require choosing to share, with out-group members, family experiences in our homes, neighbor experiences in our communities, and friendship experiences in our social interactions.
Other kinds of connections involving national identity, mutual enemies, joint emotional experience, and shared perspective can also lead to feelings of unity with out-group members; unfortunately, they are often short-lived. However, focusing concentrated, repeated attention on such connections may make them more enduring by increasing their perceived importance.
Conclusions for Legitimate Compliance Amateurs
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. -- Proverb
According to Cialdini, whether these various System 1 trigger features and fixed action patterns are being used legitimately to help communicate the results of error-free System 2 normative thinking to others, or illegitimately to mislead and exploit others naturally enmeshed in System 1 thinking, research shows the same general sequence of their use provides the highest consequent influence success rate:
1. Cultivating a positive relationship, using the reciprocation and liking trigger features;
2. Reducing uncertainty by employing the trigger features of authority and social proof; and,
3. Motivating action or other follow-through by putting into effect the trigger features of scarcity/loss aversion, and commitment and consistency.
Cialdini explains this optimal persuasion sequence utilizing only System 1 trigger features because he believes that most of those who could actually benefit from persuasion habitually lead with, and rely on, System 1 thinking. System 2 influence and communication tactics and strategies like those described by Paul Grice have relatively little, if any, initial effect on those who rely strongly on System 1 thinking. Because System 1 thinking dominates most human minds, acting as if a simple, straightforward System 2 approach using data, reason, and discussion will win the day is just so much wishful banging of the head against the wall.
By accepting the relatively risk-free generalization that Kahneman and Cialdini are correct in their overall observations of the usual nature of human thinking, it becomes evident that if reason and discussion will not work with most people because of System 1 thinking dominance, the thing to do to legitimately communicate and influence others with the useful and helpful results of relatively error-free System 2 thinking is to instead follow the saying, “If you can’t lick them, join them.”
What would this conciliatory approach to System 1 thinking’s dominance in the world look like in action?
Following Cialdini’s advice to first cultivate a positive relationship, legitimate communicators would drop the common modern habits of impatience, contentiousness, sneering, superciliousness, and snarkiness, typically thrown hard at the people who the hopeful, but understandably exasperated, compliance amateurs would really like to convince.
Following the second part of Cialdini’s advice to reduce uncertainty by providing authority and social proof, the hopeful legitimate compliance semi-professional would first make as certain as possible that what they want to communicate is truthful, genuine, and trustworthy – and then ask for the help of similar others in recruiting even more people to the particular viewpoint and ‘cause’ at hand. This last would be done keeping in mind that for most people, large or growing numbers of adherents to an idea or viewpoint is what eventually prompts them to devote some of their scarce and effortful System 2 thinking energy to a particular problem, unfamiliar idea, and/or solution.
Finally, note that the Cialdinian dictum of employing scarcity/loss aversion, and commitment and consistency, to build motivation and assure follow-through is implicit in step 2 above. Human System 2 thinking is always addressed to problems involving scarcity/loss aversion, and successfully engaging the help of others in additional recruitment to a particular viewpoint automatically invokes the trigger features of commitment and consistency.
Having read this article it offers an explanation as to why I have lost friends and family and retired early rather than allow myself to be influenced by 'the compliance professional'. That said, I have over the last few months made efforts to re-build bridges. And has been rewarded with love and reconciliation. Super article by the way.