Capitalising on Ego Traps: Some Potential Persuasion for Managed IT Services
Some recent research by Dolinski, Grzyb & Kulesza explores a new social influence technique called the "egotistic trap". I personally call it the “Emperors New Clothes Trap” and here you’ll see why.
Here are the main points :
First of all - the Concept: The egotistic trap is a social influence technique based on the premise that people agree to requests that align with their desirable qualities. The technique is designed to make the subject believe that people characterised by a particular (socially positive) quality usually agree to act on similar requests. If the subject were to refuse to grant the request, they would be indirectly admitting that they lack this quality.
The Experiments: The first experiment tested the effectiveness of the egotistic trap by asking people to participate in a survey-based study.
In the control conditions, the student said: “Excuse me, I am a university student, and I need to conduct a study to get credit for one of my courses. Could you please help me? The thing is that I need to have this questionnaire filled out: it contains 142 questions. Would you agree to fill it out?” That elicited 32.7% compliance.
