sounds good to me (groupthink)

Every college student, and most everyone else has been in a situation where they were in a group working on a project and tried to make a decision. Unfortunately most of the time the group doesn't always make the best choice in this decision making endeavor. According to Ahlflinger and Esser (2001) this is likely do to groupthink, and is influenced by the leadership of the group. They found that groups with leaders that promoted thier own ideas where more likely to fall prey to groupthink than groups with leaders that did not promote thier own ideas. All to often I have fallen prey to the concept of groupthink while working on group projects in school, liekly do to the fact that when someone would take charge of the group and suggest ideas the confidence with which they suggested the ideas would make me, as well as the other members of the group feel that they knew the material well and could be trusted. Although they did sometimes in fact know the materinal at other times they did not, and we would suffer the consequences of falling prey to groupthink. The most entertaining instance of falling prey to group think however happened one afternoon when I was still in junior high. Me and a few of my friends had been building a small boat, and a great deal of decisions had to be made. the most important of which was adding boyancy. The leader of our ragtag group, my freinds older brother, had suggested that as long as we sealed the boat well that we would not need any added boyancy. Since he was the oldest, and had a fair understanding of the way boats worked we trusted him and finished the boat with no added boyant material, which would have been a layer of foam. After the boat was finished we took it to the creek near our houses and decided to test it. We pushed the boat into the creek and it was water tight, there were no leaks. Soon after my friend and his brother got into the boat, and just as I was about to the edge of the boat dropped under the water and both my friend and his brother were drenched from the knees down. So although I did not suffer the concequences for falling prey to group think I did witness them first hand and was spared only due to the fact that I had moved a little slower.


Ahflinger, N. R., Esser, J. K. (2001). Testing the groupthink model: Effects of promotional leadership and conformity predisposition. Social Behavior and Personality, 29, 31-42.

door in face=yummy yummy snacks

The video above demonstrates a concept of compliance known as the door-in-the-face technique. According to O'Keefe and Figge (1999) the reason that this technique works is because the individual that is having the request made to them feels guilty after they deny the initial request, which is an unreasonable request that the individual making does not intend to recieve, and so is therefore more likely to accept the second request, which is more resonable and what the individual making the request wanted all along, because it will make them feel less guilty about denying the first request. For this example the Individual making the request was hungry and wanted to get a snack from the snack machine, and knowing that the door-in-the-face technique could make the person he asked for money more likly to comply with the request for a dollar in order to get that snack if they were first presented with an unreasonable request such as borrowing ten dollars for lunch. In asking for the ten dollars first the individual making the request made the person recieving it feel guilty by making a request that he knew would get denied. Then when the individual making the request asked for the dollar which was what he wanted all along the individual who had denied the initial request tried to get rid of some of the guilt that he felt for denying the first request by accepting the second request and giving the other individual the dollar he asked for.

O'Keefe, D. J., Figgie, M. (1999). Guilt and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique. Communication Monographs, 65, 312-324.

Ha Ha...Sucker (low-balling)

Cialdini, Cacioppo, Bassett, and Miller (1978) found that an effective way to have a person agree to performing a behavior was to first have them agree to the same behavior without telling them the entire cost of that behavior, and only once they had agreed to the behavior with the lower cost do you tell them the entire cost. Although I have probably taken advantage of this technique for obtaining a desired object or behavior one example form my childhood sticks out most in my mind. When I was younger the place to go was the Sonic that was located on the other side of a subdivision that was between my house and the shopping center the Sonic was located in. I wanted to go there and waste some time because I was bored, but it was a few miles away and the only transportation I had was my bike. I knew that I would have to convince my parents to let me go. They usually would if I had a friend go with me, but on this particular day my friend that usually went with me was at soccer practice. I asked my parents to go telling them that I would go with my friend. When they agreed to let me go I left on my bike to go to my friend's house telling my parents that I was going to get him before I left. After a few minutes I returned home telling my parents that my friend was not home, but that I still wanted to go. Though at the time I did not have any idea of how important the time spent going to get my friend was, which gave my parents the time to think of why it was safe for me to go (e.g., I'd have a cell phone with me in case something happened, I was avoiding major roads and would be traveling on the sidewalks most of the way, and I had made the trip before), I know know that it my have been what made them make the decision they did after they had agreed to the first request to go with a friend. Although the friend was not able to go my parents still agreed to let me go, and according to Cialdini et al. (1978) it was likely due to the low-ball procedure and the effect that commiting to something as well as having time to think of other reasons why it was ok to go through with the behavior that was agreed to would increase the low-ball procedure's effectiveness on getting my parents to let me go to Sonic and hang out.


Cialdini, R. B., Cacioppo, J. T., Bassett, R., and Miller, J. A. (1978). Low-ball procedure for producing compliance: Comittment then cost. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36 (5), 463-476.