The Hindu Business Line : Ask two questions before you submit to authority

Titles, clothes and trappings can be symbols of authority, which can reliably trigger our compliance in the absence of the genuine substance of authority, says Robert B. Cialdini in Influence: Science and Practice, fifth edition (Pearson).

These symbols, he says, are employed extensively by those compliance professionals who are short on substance. “When in a click, whirr mode, we are often as vulnerable to the symbols of authority as to the substance.” Click, the appropriate tape is activated; and whirr, out rolls the standard sequence of behaviours, explains Cialdini.

To explain how prestigious titles can lead to distortions, the author cites a study conducted on five classes of Australian college students. “A man was introduced as a visitor from Cambridge University in England. However, his status at Cambridge was represented differently in each of the classes. To one class, he was presented as a student; to a second class, a demonstrator; to another, a lecturer; to yet another, a senior lecturer; to a fifth, a professor.”

After he left the room, the class was asked to estimate his height, and the results were insightful. “It was found that with each increase in status, the same man grew in perceived height by an average of a half-inch, so that as the ‘professor’ he was seen as 2 ½ inches taller than as the ‘student’.” Another example mentioned in the book is about how after winning an election politicians become taller in the eyes of the voters!

Talking about clothes, Cialdini cautions that the guard uniform and the business suit are combined deftly by confidence artists 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…”

The ‘trappings’ section speaks of the influence of cars and jewellery. For example, owners of prestige autos receive a special kind of deference from others, studies have found. “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.”

Awareness of authority power, and recognition of how easily authority symbols can be faked, can protect us from the detrimental effects of authority influence, the author advises. Don’t hesitate to ask two questions, he urges. The first is, “Is this authority truly an expert?” This question, says Cialdini, focuses our attention on two crucial pieces of information: “the authority’s credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the topic at hand.” That way, you can effortlessly move away from a focus on possibly meaningless symbols.

The second question, again a simple one, is: “How truthful can we expect the expert to be?” Authorities, even the best informed, may not present their information honestly to us; therefore, we need to consider their trustworthiness in the situation, the author reasons. “By wondering how an expert stands to benefit from our compliance, we give ourselves another safety net against undue and automatic influence.”

Vital read.

D. Murali

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Ask two questions before you submit to authority