Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

trousers. The researchers watched from a distance and counted the number of pedestrians waiting at the corner who followed the man across the street. Like the children of Hamelin who crowded after the Pied Piper, three and a half times as many people swept into traffic behind the suited jaywalker. In this case, though, the magic came not from his pipe but his pinstripes.¹¹

It is noteworthy that the two types of authority apparel shown by the above research to be influential—the guard uniform and business suit—are combined deftly by confidence men in a fraud called the bank-examiner scheme. The target of the swindle can be anyone, but elderly persons living alone are preferred. The con begins when a man dressed in a properly conservative three-piece business suit appears at the door of a likely victim. Everything about his clothing sends a message of propriety and respectability. The white shirt is starched; the wing-tip shoes glow deeply. His suit is not trendy but classic: The lapels are three inches wide—no more, no less; the cloth is heavy and substantial, even in July; the tones are muted, business blue, business gray, business black.

He explains to his intended victim—perhaps a widow he secretly followed home from the bank a day or tWo earlier—that he is a professional bank examiner who, in the course of auditing the books of her bank, has found some seeming irregularities. He thinks he has spotted the culprit, a bank officer who is regularly doctoring reports of transactions in certain accounts. He says that the widow's account may be one of these, but he can't be sure until he has hard evidence. Therefore, he has come to ask for her cooperation. Would she help out by withdrawing her savings so a team of examiners and responsible bank officials can trace the record of the transaction as it passes across the suspect's desk?

Often the appearance and presentation of the 'bank examiner' are so impressive that the victim never thinks to check on their validity with even a simple phone call. Instead, she drives to the bank, withdraws all her money, and returns home with it to wait with the 'examiner' for word on the success of the trap. When the message comes, it is delivered by a uniformed bank guard, who arrives after closing hours to announce that all is well— apparently the widow's account was not one of those being tampered with. Greatly relieved, the 'examiner' offers gracious thanks and, since the bank is now conveniently closed, instructs the guard to return the lady's money to the vault, to save her the trouble of doing so the next day. With smiles and handshakes all around, the guard takes the funds and leaves the 'examiner' to express a few more minutes of thanks before he, too, exits. Naturally, as the victim eventually discovers, the 'guard' is no more a guard than the 'examiner' is an examiner. What they are is a pair of bunco artists who have recognized the capacity of carefully counterfeited uniforms to click us into mesmerized compliance with 'authority.'

Trappings

Aside from its function in uniforms, clothing can symbolize a more generalized type of authority when it serves an ornamental purpose. Finely styled and expensive clothes carry an aura of status and position, as do trappings such as jewelry and cars. The last of these status symbols is particularly interesting in the United States, where 'the American love affair with the automobile' gives it unusual significance.

According to the findings of a study done in the San Francisco Bay area, owners of prestige autos receive a special kind of deference from us. The experimenters discovered that 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. The motorists had little patience with the economy-car driver: Nearly all sounded their horns, and the majority of these did so more than once; two simply rammed into his rear bumper. So intimidating was the aura of the prestige automobile, however, that 50 percent of the motorists waited respectfully behind it, never touching their horns, until it drove on.

Later on, the researchers asked college students what they would have done in such situations. Compared to the true findings of the experiment, the students consistently underestimated the time it would take them to honk at the luxury car. The male students were especially inaccurate, feeling that they would honk faster at the prestige- than the economy-car driver; of course, the study itself showed just the opposite. Note the similarity of this pattern to much other research on authority pressures. As in Milgram's research, the midwestern hospital-nurses' study, and the security-guard-uniform experiment, 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.

HOW TO SAY NO

One protective tactic we can use against authority status is to remove its element of surprise. 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. A fundamental form of defense against this problem, therefore, is a heightened awareness of authority power. When this awareness is coupled with a recognition of how easily authority symbols can be faked, the benefit will be a properly guarded approach to situations involving authority-influence attempts.

Sounds simple, right? And in a way it is. A better understanding of the workings of authority influence should help us resist it. Yet there is a perverse complication—the familiar one inherent in all weapons of influence: We shouldn't want to resist altogether, or even most of the time. Generally, authority figures know what they are talking about. Physicians, judges, corporate executives, legislative leaders, and the like have typically gained their positions because of superior knowledge and judgment. Thus, as a rule, their directives offer excellent counsel. The trick is to be able to recognize without much strain or vigilance when authority promptings are best followed and when they should be resisted.

Posing two questions to ourselves can help enormously to accomplish this trick. The first is to ask, when we are confronted with what appears to be an authority figure's influence attempt, 'Is this authority truly an expert?' The question is helpful because it focuses our attention on a pair of crucial pieces of information: the authority's credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the topic at hand. By orienting in this simple way toward the evidence for authority status, we can avoid the major pitfalls of automatic deference. An illustration or two is in order.

Let's examine the highly successful Robert Young Sanka-coffee commercial in this light. If, rather than responding to his 'Marcus Welby, M.D.' association, people had focused on Mr. Young's actual status as an authority, I am confident that the commercial would not have had so long and productive a run. Obviously, Robert Young does not possess a physician's training or knowledge. We all know that. What he does possess, however, is a physician's title, 'M.D.' Now, clearly, it is an empty title, connected to him in our minds through the device of playacting. We all know that, too. But isn't it fascinating how, when we are whirring along, what is obvious often doesn't matter unless we pay specific attention to it?

That is why the 'Is this authority truly an expert?' question can be so valuable: It brings our attention to the obvious. It channels us effortlessly away from a focus on possibly meaningless symbols to a consideration of genuine authority credentials. What's more, the question impels us to distinguish between relevant authorities and irrelevant authorities. And this is a distinction that is easy to forget when the push of authority pressure is combined with the rush of modern life. The Texas pedestrians who bustled into city traffic behind a business-suited jaywalker offer a prime example. Even if the man had been the business authority his clothes suggested he might be, he was unlikely to be a greater authority on crossing the street than other people, including those who followed him into traffic.

Still, they did follow, as if his label, 'authority,' overwhelmed the vital difference between relevant and irrelevant forms. Had they bothered to ask themselves whether he represented a true expert in the situation, someone whose actions reflected superior knowledge there, I expect the result would have been quite different. The same process applies to Robert Young, a man who is not without expertise. He has fashioned a long career with many achievements in a difficult business. But his skills and knowledge are as an actor, not a doctor. When, in viewing the famous coffee commercial, we focus on his true credentials, we will realize quickly that he should be no more believed than any other successful actor who claims that Sanka is healthy.

Suppose, though, we are confronted with an authority we determine is a relevant expert. Before submitting to authority influence, it would be wise to ask a second simple question: 'How truthful can we expect the expert to be here?' Authorities, even the best informed, may not present their information honestly to us. Therefore we need to consider their trustworthiness in the situation. In fact, most of the time, we