Seeking and Resisting Compliance

Why People Say What They Do When Trying to Influence Others

Steven R Wilson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780761905233, 9780761905226
• eBook ISBN: 9781506320793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Why do individuals say what they do during everyday face-to-face influence interactions? How do people seek or resist compliance in different relational, institutional, and cultural contexts? Linking theory and research to salient, real life examples and recent academic studies, Steven Wilson introduces the reader to the theories, systems of message analysis, complexities and nuances of interpersonal persuasion. Seeking and Resisting Compliance is the only single-authored, interdisciplinary text to explore compliance gaining and resistance from a message production perspective. This incisive, clearly written text is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in interpersonal influence and persuasion in everyday interactions. Recommended for graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in persuasion as well as special topics courses in interpersonal influence, social psychology, and sociolinguistics.

Features of this text:

• Ground breaking, specific focus on message production as opposed to only message effects.

• Multiple theoretical perspectives are presented and the vast body of research from communication, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and related fields is reviewed.
• Student-friendly pedagogy, such as definitions, examples, and sections describing "common assumptions" about various theories engage students and highlight important concepts.

 

Steven Wilson currently is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at Purdue University. He is one of five associate editors for the interdisciplinary journal Personal Relationships, and past chair of the International Communication Association?s Interpersonal Communication division. His research and teaching focus on interpersonal influence and message production in a variety of contexts, from parent-child interaction in abusive families to intercultural business negotiations. He has published nearly forty articles and book chapters on these topics.

Part I

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Describing Influence Interactions

2

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The Traditional Approach to Message Analysis

Nominal-Level Strategies

Looking Ahead …

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This chapter discusses how to analyze influence interactions. It starts with an example in which one individual (Kathy) attempts to convince another (Lisa) to honor her commitment to participate in a research experiment. The example is used to show that many different features of influence interactions may capture our attention and provide insight into why people seek and resist compliance as they do. After making this point, the chapter reviews what has become the “traditional” approach to analyzing influence interactions: developing and applying typologies of nominal-level strategies. Key terms are defined, three specific typologies of compliance-seeking/resisting strategies are introduced, and potential limitations of this approach to message analysis are discussed.

EXAMPLE 2.1

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((phone rings))
01	Lisa:	Hello
02	Kathy:	Hi, is Lisa there?
03	Lisa:	This is
04	Kathy:	Hi, this is Kathy calling from the Department of
05		Communications, and I am just calling to remind you
06		that you have an extra credit experiment due tomorrow.
07	Lisa:	What time is it at?
08	Kathy:	It’s at 3:00
09	Lisa:	I’ve made other plans
10	Kathy:	Oh, well you signed up for it
11	Lisa:	Yea, but
12	Kathy:	((interrupts)) And you’re gonna get two bonus
13		points
14	Lisa:	Yea, but I invited friends out for happy hour at that
15		time though
16	Kathy:	Well, uh ((chuckle)) you’re only gonna be here for
17		half an hour ((laugh))
18		You could go after that
19	Lisa:	I know but we don’t get a chance to get together very
20		often, so we’re all pretty excited
21	Kathy:	Well you are gonna get two bonus points
22	Lisa:	Yea, I understand that, but we made other plans
23	Kathy:	But you already signed up for this
24	Lisa:	Ya but, I’m gonna, I’m really excited about this
25	Kathy:	Well just meet them half an hour later. Happy hour
26		doesn’t start till 4:00
27	Lisa:	No it doesn’t
28	Kathy:	What happy hour, are you gonna to have your own
29		happy hour?
30	Lisa:	No, we’re going to Rick’s. It starts at 3:00
31	Kathy:	Well, you could just jog over there after and meet
32		them. Cuz your partner’s gonna lose out also
33	Lisa:	Oh really?
34	Kathy:	Uh huh
35	Lisa:	Well ((pause)) I know but I’ve already made plans
36		with them also
37	Kathy:	((interrupts)) All right then
38	Lisa:	Ok. Bye bye
39	Kathy:	Thank you
(Wilson, Cruz, Marshall, & Rao, 1993, pp. 371-372)

Communication scholars frequently conduct research with samples of college undergraduates. Undergraduates often constitute appropriate samples for observing communication phenomena, especially those phenomena salient to young adults as well as those that occur in similar fashion regardless of the people involved. It is also true, however, that we study college undergraduates because they are an accessible group and can often can be induced to participate in our research without monetary compensation.

One potential hazard of conducting research with college undergraduates is that students sometimes agree to participate but then fail to show up for a study at the appointed time. From a student perspective, this is easy to understand. Undergraduate students typically sign up to participate simply to earn extra course credit. They sometimes must complete dull tasks during communication studies, and they often leave afterward without understanding why they did what they did. Students also are busy with school and work demands, hence it makes sense that they often change their minds after signing up to participate in research projects.

Several colleagues and I saw this state of affairs as an opportunity to study how individuals seek compliance (Wilson et al., 1993). Participants in our research were undergraduates who signed up for an out-of-class study on interpersonal persuasion. When they arrived, we told them a story about a different study being conducted by another professor, whom we’ll call Professor Jones. Specifically, our participants were told:

Professor Jones wants to study initial conversations between individuals from different backgrounds. To do this, Professor Jones has given a questionnaire about people’s backgrounds to students in an introductory communication class. Based on their answers, Professor Jones has established pairs of unacquainted students who come from different backgrounds. He then has scheduled these pairs of students to arrive at a communication laboratory at a specific time to engage in a “get-acquainted” conversation. The problem is that many of Professor Jones’s students are failing to show up at the communication laboratory. Aside from inconveniencing Professor Jones, students who do not show up also prevent their partners (i.e., the other students with whom they have been paired) from completing the study.

What did this have to do with our own study? After telling this story, we gave each of our own participants a list of the names of 20 undergraduate students who supposedly had signed up for Professor Jones’s experiment. We asked each participant to telephone these 20 students and remind them about the time and place of their own experiment. We told our participants that if any of the students had changed their minds about coming, the participants should try to persuade them to honor their promises to complete Professor Jones’s study. We told our participants to use their own judgment about what to say and about how long to persist in trying to persuade Professor Jones’s students to show up. Hence each of our participants made 20 telephone calls; all calls were audio-taped and transcribed for analysis.

As you probably have guessed, our story about Professor Jones’s study on initial interactions was fictitious. Our participants actually were telephoning 20 “confederates,” each of whom was working with us. Of each participant’s 20 phone calls, 10 were answered by confederates who were instructed simply to say yes, they would show up for Professor Jones’s study as promised. One call always went to a wrong number, and a second always went to someone we knew was not there to receive the call. The remaining 8 calls were answered by confederates who were trained to say no, they would not show up. When prompted, each of the confederates provided a different reason why he or she had changed his or her mind about participating in Professor Jones’s study.¹ In the telephone call shown in Example 2.1, “Lisa” is a confederate who tells “Kathy” that she will not show up because she has made plans to go to happy hour instead.

The conversation in Example 2.1 offers a useful illustration of how the same influence interaction can be described using many different approaches. In the following section, I use this conversation to show both the complexity and the importance of describing influence interactions.

The Task of Describing Influence Interactions

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MULTIPLE APPROACHES TO DESCRIBING THE KATHY-LISA CONVERSATION

Let’s say that we want to analyze the conversation between Lisa and Kathy as an interpersonal influence episode. To analyze the conversation, what would we look at? Clearly, there are many possible answers to this question. As one approach, we could analyze how Lisa and Kathy try to influence each other. Focusing on Kathy, we might notice that she stresses how Lisa can help herself by showing up for Professor Jones’s study. Kathy calls the study an “extra credit experiment” (see line 06) and emphasizes that Lisa will earn “two bonus points” (lines 12 and 21). Kathy also argues that Lisa has an obligation to participate because Lisa “signed up” for Professor Jones’s study (lines 10 and 23). If we focus on Lisa rather than Kathy, we could analyze how Lisa tries to resist Kathy’s request. Lisa justifies backing out by stressing how excited she is about meeting her friends at happy hour, especially since she rarely gets to see her friends (see lines 19-20, 24).

As a second approach, we could look at the topics Kathy and Lisa talk about. In lines 04-05, Kathy talks about “calling from the Department of Communications” and says she is calling to remind Lisa about the experiment. In line 30, Lisa talks about “going to Rick’s” and about happy hour starting at 3:00. We might ask why Kathy and Lisa talk about these topics, and whether certain topics occur repeatedly in these telephone calls.

A third approach would be to analyze general qualities of Kathy’s and Lisa’s behavior. For example, we could ask whether Kathy exerts strong pressure on Lisa to comply with her request, as opposed to letting Lisa back out on her promise easily. There are several signs that Kathy exerts strong pressure: She interrupts and begins arguing why Lisa should comply before Lisa has an opportunity to disclose the specific reason she is backing out (lines 10 and 12); she stresses that Lisa is obligated to comply (lines 10 and 23); she suggests ways that Lisa could participate in the experiment and still attend happy hour, rather than simply accepting the obstacle Lisa poses (lines 25 and 31); and she emphasizes that Lisa’s decision not to show up will hurt Lisa’s partner (line 32). As a complementary question, we could ask whether Lisa is firm in resisting Kathy’s request. This question might draw our attention to the fact that Lisa repeats her statement that she has “made other plans” three times (lines 09, 22, and 35).

A fourth approach would be to analyze the order in which Kathy and Lisa perform actions over time. If we focus on Kathy, we might notice that early in the conversation she stresses how Lisa can help herself by completing the experiment (line 12), whereas later in the conversation she emphasizes how Lisa will hurt her partner by not ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. Describing Influence Interactions
• Part II. Metaphors for Studying Persuasive Message Production
• Part III. Theories of Goal Pursuit
• Part IV. Studying Persuasive Message Production in Context
• Conclusion
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Author