Cross-Cultural Investigation of Compliance Without Pressure

Abstract

Compliance-without-pressure techniques have been widely studied in North America and West Europe. Among these techniques, the "but you are free" (BYAF) is a verbal compliance procedure that solicits someone to comply with a request by simply telling a person that he or she is free to accept or refuse the request. This technique is interpreted with the commitment theory and the psychological reactance theory which are more relevant in individualistic cultures than in collectivist cultures. So, four studies

Cultural differences in psychological reactance: Responding to social media censorship

“…Yet, there were no differences in state or trait reactance between European Canadians and East Asian Canadians. These findings, on the surface, seem to be at odds with some previous research which suggests a link between independent self-construal and psychological reactance (e.g., Savani et al 2008;Pascual et al 2012).…”

“…We included two cultural groups to which to compare the Iranian cultural grouppeople from European and East Asian cultural backgrounds. Consistent with the literature (e.g., Jonas et al 2009;Pascual et al 2012), we expected that individuals from European North American (vs. East Asian) cultural backgrounds would exhibit a higher degree of psychological reactance because of higher level of independent self-construal. Taken together, we expected that participants from an Iranian cultural background would exhibit more psychological reactance than would participants from European cultural backgrounds, who in turn would exhibit more psychological reactance than would participants from East Asian cultural backgrounds.…”

Social Influence, Social Psychology of

“…This study was controversial, and the subject of numerous replications (Quiamzade and Mugny, 2009) and reviews (see Blass, 2004). The effect appears to be robust across cultures (Pascual et al, 2012).…”

Disrupt-Then-Reframe is in the Air: A French Replication and Refinement

“…Although the transculturality of social infl uence processes is a fi eld of Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/12/18 12:58 PM research that has been litt le investigated by social psychologists, several studies (Aaker, 2000;Cialdini, Wosinska, Barrett , Butner, & Gornik-Durose, 1999;Han & Shavitt , 1994) have nevertheless demonstrated that the eff ects of persuasive communications varied in diff erent cultures (Courbet & Marchioli, in press). In a similar vein, persuasion techniques like the touch technique (Kleinke, 1977) and the "but you are free of" technique (Guéguen & Pascual, 2000), or those based on successive requests as with the foot-in-the-door technique (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), are also known for being sensitive to cultural eff ects (Guéguen & Pascual, 2000;Pascual et al, 2012;Petrova, Cialdini, & Sills, 2007). In the light of these theoretical elements, the disrupt phase can be interpreted, on the one hand, as the disruption of a communication situation by an odd element, an element that could not have been predicted by the subjects and which alters the sequence of events initially expected in accordance with the social situation activated.…”

“…cross-cultural (Pascual & Guéguen, 2004; see also Pascual et al, 2012). According to Morling and Lamoreaux (2008), messages in a persuasive paradigm "can also induce intuitively 'opposite' eff ects" depending on the culture (Aaker & Williams, 1998).…”