Egotistic trap as a social influence technique

ABSTRACT

Two experiments tested the effectiveness of an egotistic trap, a social influence technique based on the premise that people agree to requests that align with their desirable qualities. In the first experiment, people were asked to participate in a survey-based study. In the control conditions (standard request), approx. 32.7% said yes. Yet, when it was mentioned that intelligent individuals were sought after and the subject appeared intelligent, the percentage became 52.4%. The second experiment aimed to persuade car owners to have their cars inspected at an official service station. Of the participants, 56.7% agreed in the standard conditions. However, when the phrase ‘studies show that sensible customers have their cars inspected at official service stations’ was included, it became 71.7%.

KEYWORDS:

• Egotistic Trap
• persuasion
• request formulation

Note

1. The process of collecting data regarding the driver’s appearance at the service station was terminated 30 days from the date of the conversation with the given driver.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank students from “Introduction to social psychology” group (year 2019) for their assistance in Study 1 and Edyta Futoma for her assistance in Study 2 as well as the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable input and critical remarks regarding the original version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data from both studies are publicly accessible at the following addresses: Study 1: https://osf.io/ps26k and Study 2: https://osf.io/ubq73