..just because. The persuasive pull of justified requests.

	Because is an influential word. According to popular re-renderings of research, the word because can get your copies made faster, get you through airport security without waiting in line, and (sometimes) even get your children to behave. Because is persuasive (errr) because it’s a trigger. When people use the word because, it’s typically the lead-in to justify a request that they have just made. With experience, we learn that pattern. Research suggests that we may learn it so well that we accept the word “because” as the reason and may not bother to listen to what comes after it. For example, in their now classic Xerox study, Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz (1972) explored how the language of requests influences willingness to comply. To do this they observed how well different requests to cut into the line at the copier worked. They found when people ask to cut into the line to make 5 copies, they are successful about 60% of the time, no questions asked. At the baseline, people are generally polite. (For what it’s worth, the actual request was also polite: “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine?”) When the requestors add a reasonable justification for cutting into the line (“…because I am in a hurry”) the request becomes much more persuasive and compliance shoots up to 94%.
Because. That’s why.	The part of the study that captured people’s attention though, is what happens when you add “because….” paired with a meaningless justification: “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I need to make copies?” Um. Yeah. That would be why you would be waiting to use the Xerox machine. Despite the circular reason, the compliance rate for the “because I need to make copies” request was a somewhat stunning 93%. Giving an empty reason was just as effective as giving a good one. Based on this, Langer and colleagues suggested that in certain conditions our consideration of the actual reason for a request may be mindless. Others have extrapolated on the finding to suggest that you don’t really need to bother with the reason bit. You just need to say “because.” Compliance happens.
Read on. Because there’s more.	There are two ways to think about the mindless response that Langer and colleagues describe. First, it might be about the word “because.” Alternatively, it could be about the request. Here is the situation: You are waiting in line to make copies. Someone comes up and asks to cut in front of you and make 5 copies. Stated reason or not, asking to cut in line is fairly unusual behavior in a office. In fact, the weirdness of the unusual request makes the situation a little ambiguous. You have been socialized to be polite and (hopefully) to give others the benefit of the doubt. And, critically, the request is small. 5 copies. Will waiting for one person to make 5 more copies change the outcome of your day? Probably not. I suspect you would let them slip ahead. Now consider another scenario: You are waiting in line to make copies. Someone comes up and asks to cut in line to make 25 copies of a document “because they need to make copies.” What do you do? 25 copies isn’t a huge job. But its more substantial than 5 copies. After 25 copies you are more likely to run out of paper or jam up the machine. The risk and potential cost is just a little bit higher. High enough to be a tipping point, in fact, for most people in line. When Langer and colleagues ran that condition, the compliance went down substantially. First the good news – people still tended to be polite and helpful to a colleague in need. When the request to cut in was offered with a meaningful reason, 42% of the respondents still stepped back and let their colleague cut in – even for the larger request. However, there was no difference in compliance between just asking (“Excuse me. I have 25 copies. May I use the Xerox machine?”) and the empty reason (“…May I use the Xerox machine because I need to make copies”). In fact, replications of the Xerox study demonstrate that, compared with offering no reason, willingness to comply goes down when the justification for the request is empty (Folkes, 1985.)
Because sometimes I listen.	So what’s going on? When a request is small, the word because triggers a reflexive mental shortcut: The person said “because.” If they said “because” THEY must have some reason and if they have a reason – even if they can’t articulate it well – the cost to me is small, so OK, cut in line because whatever it is, it seems important to that person. It’s easier to say yes, than to listen carefully to the reason. Under these conditions, any reason will work as long as there is one. Which I know because you said the word because. However, if the request is large – involves potential cost – I listen to the justification you give and may actively weigh it against the possible cost of your request. If the reason isn’t good, I may comply. But if the reason doesn’t make sense, all bets are off. Applying influence strategies in the decision architecture design works the same way. If you ask me for something relatively painless – simple demographic information, perhaps – I should be more likely to cooperate if you offer me a reason for doing so. I may not even read your reason – as long as it’s there. (Do you ever click the links that say “Why we need this info”?) But if you are asking me for something real, your reason better make sense or my momentum will be gone. So it goes with persuasion tools. They tend to work more reflexively when the situation is ambiguous and cost perceived to be low. But they only work within limits. And, as the replication work shows, they can backfire if you cross the line. Be mindful chasing compliance with because. Because it has limits.
References	Langer, E., Blank, A., and Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 635-642. Folkes, V.S. (1985). Mindlessness or mindfulness: A partial replication and extension of Langer, Blank and Chanowitz. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48(3), 600-604.

Undo unto others….Twitter’s imperfect study of reciprocity and (un)requited love

Every once in awhile pop culture gives psychologists a gift.

Survivor, for instance, was a gift. The Apprentice, Parking Wars and now Smile, you’re under arrest… also gifts. In fact, the entire genre of reality shows is s a window for observing influence strategies and obedience-to-authority in a semi-controlled setting.  Authority. Social Proof. Ingroup-outgroup distinctions.  Reciprocity. They are all there for the watching.

And now we have a new gift: Twitter (www.twitter.com). Twitter is the emerging social network starlette, a microblogging tool. Its a bit like Facebook: You sign up to follow people you like and/or who share your interests and you exchange information. Except that on Twitter, that information is limited to (hopefully) profound and pithy statements of 140 characters or less. Think of it as exchanging headlines or pointers.

Twitter is a rich space to study reciprocity. Reciprocity is basically our drive to return favors. Reciprocity is why, when someone makes you dinner, you feel obliged to make them dinner back.  And why when someone follows you in Twitter, you feel a little guilty if you don’t follow back. At least the first few hundred times.

Osen Komura Twitter Stats

For psychologists,  Twitter could be a space to answer questions that we can’t necessarily ask in a university research lab. Internal Research Review Boards are reasonably twitchy about internet research and privacy, after all. The scale and reach of Twitter is big, too.  And, at its essence,  Twitter is reciprocity in its most kneejerk form.

Social psychologists should take note: Armchair psychologists are already running quasi-studies ….

For instance, Stefan Tanse, a student in Romania, created the Twitter account Osen Komura  (www.twitter.com/osen) to explore whether people automatically “followback” strangers who follow them. He posted a few benign messages, signed up to follow 40,ooo other people and watched what happened. When he quit watching sometime in April 08, 12% of the people that he followed had signed up to follow him back. That’s a pretty good rate for a feed with no real content. And his following rate is still growing. Today (30Dec08) his followback rate is 24%. For sure, this exercise is well known. Myriads of bloggers have highlighted the “Who is Osen Komura and why is he following me?” phenomena.   But if people read the blogs, they’d know  … oh never mind.

Nantela (a biologist from Montreal) expanded the experiment in two ways.  First, he wanted to see if people really do just click “follow” reflexively or if they actually look at the persons feed before they decide to follow it?  To find out, he created Ru4real and repeat posted a single message to Twitter: “DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ACCOUNT. It is an experiment to see how many people read the pages of the people they follow. You are a tool.” And signed up to follow 6,ooo people. The blind followback rate was about 10%.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Nantela also wanted to see if reciprocity applies for negative events, too. That is, if I unfollow you, will you unfollow me? (Maybe we call this revenge?)  So he unfollowed everybody he had been following. If reciprocity applies for negative events, then we  expect  the people that Nantala unfollowed will  unfollow him, too.

Nantela’s observations suggest that we do also reflexively return for “negative favors”. Unfollowing happens. Ru4real lost two followers just yesterday.  Nantela’s “results” suggest that retaliation for unfollowing happens at a slower and lower rate than for following. Be careful, though. That’s likey just an artifact  of how Twitter works. Today,  Twitter’s default alerts you when someone signs up to follow you. But it doesn’t do that that when someone UNfollows you. So, while there is an clear and explict “follow” event to respond to, there is no such “unfollow” event to reciprocate. So Twitter needs to change a little before we can learn whether for if revenge is as reflexive as it is sweet.  Note: Some Twitterers opt, through add-on programs, to be notified when someone unfollows. I suspect those people are reflected in the  droppoff cliff in the followers graph above.

Maybe Twitter will change. I hope it does, actually. Running this “experiment” for real could extend and refine our understanding of reciprocity and and interpersonal behaviors within both Twitter and within the social networking universe.

UsabilityMethods: For cardsorting, 20 is enough.

Q: How many participants do we need for our cardsort?

Tullis and Woods conducted a real data simulation study to determine the practically optimal number of participants need for cardsorting.

First they collected data from a large set of users–168 people to be exact. Then they ran cardsort “studies” of different sizes by randomly drawing data for individual participants from the larger data set. Since it was all mathematical–based on similarity scores within data pairs and sets– it was easy (sort of) to “run the studies” enough times to understand the average variation that occurrs in the groups of different sizes.
Based on their simulations, Tullis & Woods concluded cardsorting studies with just 20-30 participants are robust and predictive.

Tullis, T., and Wood, L. (2004), “How Many Users Are Enough for a Card-Sorting Study?” Proceedings UPA’2004 (Minneapolis, MN, June 7-11, 2004).