Liking as One of the Universal Strategies - Essay Example

Compliance-gaining methods In daily routines, individuals, often encounter situations, when they should gain compliance or achieve consent, in order to satisfy their current needs. Trenholm and Jensen (2004) provide an extensive theoretical framework of techniques, used by individuals in order to achieve agreement and improve ‘seeing eye-to-eye’. The scholars present sixteen compliance-gaining methods, which, if applied correctly, bring positive emotional and cognitive response and to great extent facilitate interpersonal communication. The effectiveness of these techniques is determined by the situation itself, i.e. the communicator may ignore the fact that his/her request is unrealistic or extremely dominant, so the framework is not a remedy against one’s narrow-mindness or inability to empathize, i.e. extrapolate the other person’s situation on his/her own conditions and experience the same emotions and aspirations. It is also important to understand that those techniques should be used wisely, especially when combining some of them, as the sixteen strategies are quite diverse and often incompatible with each other. The situations, described by Trenholm and Jensen include the need for reaching consent with a senior, who will be asked for providing her basement for noisy party. Another case study employs gaining compliance with a person, who will be asked for small service – feeding the communicator’s cat for two days. Another case contains the situation, when it is necessary to ask a stranger for a service, i.e. impose to him certain behavior. As one might assume, the component of persuasion is presented in all cases, so the scholars, referring to appropriate investigations, conclude that communicators are expected to build their requests in a friendly and polite manner, which would make him/her attractive to an interlocutor. The first strategy, promise, is associated with basic human needs and deriving motivations, which include the reference to mercantile human nature as a universal law. Rewards are gained as positive reinforcement which stimulates individuals to go ahead with their useful deeds. On the contrary, threat is used in order to intimidate an interlocutor, so the main precondition for this strategy is trust to the communicator, or, in some sense, asymmetric relationship between the two persons (threats are often used with children, as they perceive negative reinforcement a bit stronger than reward). Expertise is one more usable strategy, as it points to communicator’s knowledge of positive consequence, which are likely to be brought be a favorable deed. Expertise, in my opinion, is more applicable in job and career area, as it requires a sort of academic or professional knowledge, employed to show the nature of things. Negative expertise is also included into the list, as it is useful when dealing with school or university truants or those who ignore their duties – this strategy helps put them on the right place and thus gain compliance. Liking is one of the simplest and most universal strategies, as it requires of communicator friendly gestures, compliments or other pleasant messages, which would be addressed to an interlocutor. On the other hand, liking might bring converse results: interlocutor might view communicator’s friendliness as artificial and incongruent to the other actions, highlighting the truth about communicator’s attitude towards interlocutor. Pre-giving is more helpful than promise, as in this case communicator materializes their promise directly before the request. Pre-giving immediately creates a kind of interpersonal debt, so the most conscientious ‘targets’ are morally unable to refuse, as the latter considers their rejection as an inadequate response to the ‘actor’s’ deed. On the other hand, pre-giving might tear two friends, who view real friendship as totally altruistic relationship. Aversive stimulation should be used carefully, as it is designed primarily for teenagers or young deviants, who establish cognitive patterns after a set of punishments. This strategy should be used only in case threats and other negative methods turn out to be impracticable or insufficient. Aversive stimulation is painful for trustful or naïve individuals, who are likely to suffer from such ‘disrespect’. Debt is also a strong technique, but the understanding of ‘owe‘ varies among personalities, and such message might cause different reactions – from tears to laughter. Moral appeal weaker and more neutral technique, as morality today is not regarded as a virtue and the importance of ethical standards and related internal regulation is often overstressed, and moral appeal thus can be combined with the other strategies in an attempt to strengthen the ‘target’s’ conviction in the importance of the deed. Positive and negative self-feeling touch both physical and emotional comfort and is to great extent influential when dealing with particularly impressible personalities. On the other hand, such appeal might cause ‘target’ to think about actor’s ‘unhealthy wishes’, i.e. doubts in the honesty and clarity of actor’s intentions. Altercasting is also a controversial strategy, as it points to the fact, that the actor ‘judges’ the ‘target’, i.e. concentrates on interlocutor’s personality traits instead of their behavior, yet this appeal to personal, intrinsic virtuosity sometimes generates reflection and following compliance, especially if the ‘target’ is a child with concrete thinking. The negative variant of this strategy might cause aggressive behavior, in case the ‘target’ takes the message too seriously and begins to view the ‘actor’ as censor or controller. Appeal to altruism is widely-used, as it is aimed at causing compassion and shaping pissing attitude. The only problem is overuse of this technique, when the ‘actor’ literally turn him/herself into a looser and takes destructive position (constant problems, troubles and resulting needs) rather than constructive (temporary need, the satisfaction of which normalizes well-being). Positive and negative esteem focuses mainly on family values or principles attributed to certain social group, so this strategy is workable with those who value their strong sense of involvement or social inclusion and wish to maintain and preserve it. Furthermore, the requests should have certain structure: for instance, instead of ‘I’m thirsty” actor should say ‘Would you mind getting me some water?’ (Trenholm and Jensen, 2004, p.241). There is one main guideline for articulating requests: they are supposed not to be importunate or selfish, so that the target gets positive emotions after helping such a nice and polite person. The second situation, pointing to the request for feeding my cat for two days, should be resolved by using promise or other positive techniques. For instance, I can build my message in a following way: ‘Could you please look after my cat for two days? I promise, I will bring you seeds for your grass-plot – I see, you always keep it well-groomed’. In this case, my neighbor gets anticipates positive reinforcement, so he is likely to comply. Another possible solution is bringing my neighbor a pie, baked by my mother and concluding ‘Hope you’ll enjoy it, it’s much tastier than those from supermarkets’. I think my request is absolutely realistic, so my persuasion methods are both simple and workable, i.e. applicable in such ‘minor’ requests. The third situation seems more challenging, as it requires communicating unfamiliar person, teenagers, whose behavior is unpredictable. In my opinion, I should be maximally polite and neutral: ‘Hello, lady! Could you please help me, I’m being in trouble with my car..’ I think I should stay in the car so that I don’t cause any suspicions. Appeal to altruism and self-feeling seems helpful in this case, so I would say something like: ‘You are a live-saver, I’m sure you will feel better after helping me!’ It is also important to remember that effective communication with teenagers includes friendly attitude, i.e. I should use appropriate language or some slang words so that the girl doesn’t regard me as a stranger. To sum up, aforementioned strategies are a synthesis of persuasion model proposed by Trenholm and Jensen (2004), but it is important to say that their universality is doubtful, and I usually keep from using threats or negative altercasting, because these strategies often fail to influence adults in a desirable way, but conversely, bring emotional storm. Nevertheless, I find this article informative, as it contributes to my personal development: keeping this outline of compliance gaining strategies, I can use them skillfully and adapt them to situation. The case studies are both interesting and educative, as they help me plan my behavior in allegedly unexpected conditions. In future I will be able to select from the list and combine several strategies where possible, since the article allows organizing the strategies into the clear structure and designing some persuasion patterns for most common and frequent situations. I also have find out that the use of negative techniques is likely to cause discomfort, as I have clearly considered their ethical backgrounds. Read More