How Can People Be Induced to Willingly Change Their Behavior? The Path from Persuasive Communication to Binding Communication

Abstract

How can people be induced to willingly change their behavior? The present article has three main objectives. Its first purpose is to review some of the procedures pertaining to the ‘free will’ compliance paradigm. These procedures increase the likelihood that others will freely comply to one's requests (low‐ball, teasing, foot‐in‐the door, touch, and ‘you are free to’ procedures). The second objective is to introduce a theory stemming from social psychology, namely, the theory of commitment. Finally, we wish to describe the binding communication approach that can be situated at the intersection of research conducted in both the fields of communication, more specifically in the domain of persuasive communication, and the fields of commitment and free will compliance. A project carried out to encourage school children to behave in a more environmentally friendly way will be described to illustrate the approach.

Preference elicitation under oath

“…This minor addition to the design increased the average weight of recycled paper by more than one hundred percent. Similar results were obtained by asking people to sign an agreement to replace ordinary lamp bulbs at home by low consumption ones (Joule, Girandola, and Bernard, 2007) or to shower instead of bath (Joule, Bernard, and HalimiFalkowicz, 2008). When commitment is made stronger through writing or public announcement, the change in behavior is longer-lasting, and survives after the promise have been made (Geller, Kalsher, Rudd, and Lehman, 1989;Boyce and Geller, 2000).…”

The role of board independence on R&D investment’ choice decided by committed managers: The cognitive management of executives’ discretion

“…This finding of the failure of information and argumentation force in behavior changing, improves several studies showing the gap that can exist between ideas and actions (Sheeran, 2002;Webb and Sheeran, 2006). This gap is reduced with the influence of commitment link between individual and the key action (Katzev & Wang, 1994;Roussiau & Girandola, 2002;Girandola & Roussiau, 2003;Joule et al, 2007;Girandola, 2005. Based on this affirmation, we hypothesize that if the manager is cognitively and psychologically committed in innovation decision, the pressure of outside directors on the CEO's optimistic attitude, affect consequently his behavior.…”

“…CEO perceives R&D investment as an action which protects them from losing their job. However, the theory of persuasion's evidence affirms that changing attitudes and beliefs don't leads to changing behaviors (Joule et al, 2007;Girandola, 2005). So, firstly we hypothesize as follow:…”

“…Therefore, theoretical overview conducted by the theory of commitment, (Joule et al, 2007;Girandola, 2005 founds that if persuasive mechanisms can lead to disseminate new knowledge or attitudes, they are rarely efficient in changing actual behavior. Their effort in information and argumentation helps over time to change cognitions, concepts, attitudes, and, absolutely, to awaken consciousness.…”

Willingness to pay of committed citizens: A field experiment

“…These two hypotheses can be understood in the light of the theory of commitment (Kiesler 1971;Joule and Beauvois 1998), whereby commitment means the pledging or binding of the individual to behavioural acts (Kiesler and Sakumura 1966, p. 349). Foot-in-the-door experiments are situations that typically produce this kind of commitment (Joule et al 2007), by asking subjects to comply with an initial request and later on making a second request which is thematically in line with the initial request. In commitment theory in general, a rst request acts as a commitment device that puts people in a certain mindframe regarding the action that is going to follow (Joule and Beauvois 1998).…”