Western Illinois University Communications Professor Chris Carpenter has co-authored a book titled “The Science of Gaining Compliance.”
This book is Mr. Carpenter’s second publication after completing his first book titled “Critical Question in Persuasion Research” in 2021. Go here for more information on the book or to purchase it.
“The publication includes tricks, some would say cons, for getting people to say yes when they would rather say no,” Mr. Carpenter said in a WIU news release. “These include things like asking for a huge favor and then when the target refuses, asking for what you want (door-in-the-face) and saying things like, ‘Even a penny will help’ or ‘Of course, you’re free to refuse.’ We try to teach scientific research on when they work and when they do not and why this is. I did some of the studies we cite in the book at WIU with students as the targets for the requests.”
The book’s preface includes: “The Science of Gaining Compliance provides readers with an examination of key compliance-gaining techniques to make sense of their form, effects, mediators and moderators. Readers learn how compliance-gaining differs from other forms of social influence, such as persuasion because it takes place in the active communication context of interpersonal encounters. The text emphasizes how compliance-gaining techniques don’t rely on applying pressure and also focus on changing behavior, rendering them a unique form of interpersonal communication.”
The opening chapters introduce the concept of compliance-gaining and investigate multi-message techniques, including foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face and temptation techniques such as lowballing, bait-and-switch and the lure. Later chapters present a set of single-message techniques, including pregiving, instilling guilt, direct requests and confusion strategies. The final chapter summarizes each of the techniques as well as their similarities and differences.
Franklin J. Boster, the first author of “The Science of Gaining Compliance,” was Mr. Carpenters’ adviser and dissertation chair through his Ph.D. program at Michigan State. Michael R. Kotowski and Allison Z. Shaw were in the same Ph.D. program as Mr. Carpenter.
“We started this book in 2014, but it kind of fizzled out for awhile. But after Boster and I finished the persuasion book, we were talking about what we might do next and he suggested we finally finish the book,” Mr. Carpenter said. “I wrote four chapters, Boster wrote four chapters and the other two each wrote one chapter. We hope you enjoy it.”
