Interpersonal Influence, PGS 461
Arizona State University



This page contains class updates, policies, & calendar.
To access web-based reading assignments, please use the URL given in class.

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Prerequisite: Intro. to Social Psychology (PGS 350).
Division of Labor: Please contact your instructor for questions regarding lectures & tests, and your T.A. for questions regarding policies, grading, materials, and cumulative point counts.

Purpose: This course is designed to educate you about influence: persuasion, compliance, propaganda, and mind control--and how to resist those same influences.

Lecture Style: This course is modeled after a career seminar--the sort you'll attend as a professional after you've graduated. This means the course is primarily designed to be practical and useful; secondarily, the course attempts to prepare you for further education in this field, and will give an advantage to those who plan to enter graduate school.

Guest Lectures & Videos: We have attempted to retain experts in the field to talk to you about topics of their expertise. We have also arranged for you to view several videos in class that demonstrate influence in action. These lectures and videos are important to the course, and we'll be writing exam questions from them.

Reading: It's important to keep up with the reading. If you wait until the week before the test to read the assigned material, you won't learn or retain the material as well and you'll likely do poorly on exams. Readings in addition to the texts will be found at my website, but you will have to obtain the URL for those readings from me. Readings will be reflected in the exams and will also contribute to your papers.

Homework: You'll like the homework in this class! Most of the homework assignments entail watching videos or surfing the web. Homework isn't turned in, but test questions will pertain to assignments. Notice: you need to complete the assigned video-watching and web-surfing before the class lecture that refers to them, so that we can talk about them in class. We recommend you watch the videos as early in the semester as possible, and return videos quickly to the rental store so other students can access them.

Attendance: Your attendance is required. We want you to be at every class--on time, every time! You won't be able to benefit from this course unless you attend lectures. That's why the TA will take attendance at classes. But what happens if you get sick, or an unavoidable emergency occurs? For this reason, you're given three unpenalized absences--that's a generous one and a half weeks of class!--for which no reasons or excuses are required or requested. Even if you miss a class for a good reason--if it's one of your three unpenalized misses, please don't ask us to excuse it, because no excuse is necessary. Upon each additional unexcused absence, however, your will lower your grade by a step (e.g., B to B-). So it goes without saying that you should save your three no-penalty absences for when you need them. If you must miss a class, please contact a fellow student for notes. Class notes are not available from the instructor or the TA.

Quizzes: Quizzes will be announced beforehand. They will contribute to the "Exam" portion of your grade.

Exams: There will be four multiple choice exams which will count for 60% of your grade. The exams will concentrate on your knowledge of the principles of influence and your ability to apply them; some recall knowledge will be tested also.

Project-Papers: Two project-papers are due, which are designed to provide students with first-hand, direct experiences relevant to influence principles. Together, they are worth 40% of your grade. You must submit a minimum one-page outline of each paper two weeks before it is due. If you don't, you'll be lowering your paper by one full grade. This caution is exercised to 1) encourage proactive, organized thinking about the paper; and 2) to prevent you from engaging in some activity that might be dangerous, illegal, immoral, or not intellectually productive. Questionable projects will be personally discussed with you, and modifications negotiated. Please see below, "Writing for PGS461," for guidance regarding the writing of these papers.

Team Paper: On Being a Target of Social Influence. The objective of this project is to experience how influence professionals attempt to persuade you in a specific situation. The following "field observations" represent three variations on what we consider to be the minimum amount of exposure necessary in order to experience significant influence. (See printed syllabus for recommended "field observation" options.) As a rough guideline, you should spend from 3 to 5 hours with a variety of influence professionals in order to experience the tactics they use. Notice that we consider these as minimum guidelines for a successful paper. You need to experience sufficient influence so you have enough material to write a good paper. If, for example, you happen to encounter several salespeople who say something like, "There's the item. Look it over and tell me if you want it," you'll have little to write about. We urge you to place yourselves in a sufficient number of (safe) influence situations so you can compare techniques across influence attempts.

This 12-15 page paper should include: 1) A brief, summarizing narrative of the events (no more than two pages); 2) The social and physical nature of the influence setting; 3) An analysis of the influence tactics used on you or tactics you observed being used on others (this is the main portion of the paper). Concentrate on linking your observations to influence principles we discussed in class and that you encountered in your own reading, and be able to associate appropriate theories, names and papers with important tactics. 4) A one- or two-page bibliography, where you reference the studies from which you distilled the principles. Use APA style for the citations. Don't just cite our textbooks or lectures, but actually refer to the seminal articles on the topics (they're in the bibliographies of our texts, and I'll reference particular articles in class. To get exact bibliographic references, you may need to use PsychLit at the library. This is part of the learning process!)

The first paper is a cooperative effort because we have found working in teams improves the quality of papers. You'll write this paper with one other person in the class--anyone you choose and who also chooses you. The trick to working in teams is to experience the influence situation together and then immediately discuss it to enhance your understanding of what happened. Create an outline for the paper well in advance of actually writing the paper, and then assign different parts of the outline to different writers. Then write your assigned sections, merge the document, and have both members rewrite, edit and proof the final product. In the past, I've had a very few people who didn't work well together. If you're having 'relationship' problems, however, talk to me at the earliest possible time--at minimum, two weeks before the paper is due.

Individual Paper: On Being an Agent of Social Influence. The objective is to experience perceptively the sense of power and achievement in persuading another person to modify her or his behavior in some directed fashion -- to start, stop, or change some response. This behavior change must be in a pro-social direction, such as getting someone to stop smoking rather than to start smoking, or to start energy conservation, or to become less shy, or to give blood to a local blood center, donate to Arizona State University, etc. (Please note that seductions are not suitable for academic credit).

This 7-8 page paper should include: 1) A brief summary of your objective; 2) Your plan to implement social influence (this should represent approximately 3-4 pages of your paper). Think hard about the types of influence that would work on this particular person, in this particular situation. Draw on theory to make a successful influence attempt. Describe your timeline and procedure. We will be grading you on the appropriateness of your approach. 3) Give a brief narrative (about a page or so) regarding the actual implementation of the influence attempt 4) Comment on the results of your influence attempt. Objective criteria are preferred for the evaluation of your attempt. Your grade doesn't depend on whether you were successful or not, so be honest. 5) Propose what you'd do the same or differently if you were to attempt this process again.

Grades: Throughout the semester you'll be able to periodically review the TA's spreadsheets that document your progress in the class. Please notice that we can't give you an exact determination of your final grade during the duration of the semester, since many points are not collected until the final weeks of the semester. It may be that some final-week adjustments are necessary, so you'll only be "sure" of obtaining a certain grade if you're well above a cut-off point. Cut-off points are the usual, and are firm: the bottom A=90%, B=80%, C=70%, D=60%.

There are many methodological, statistical and theoretical issues to master in psychology, and you've probably discovered you can't necessarily rely on your intuition to tell you what's right. Obviously, those who are better prepared for this class will do better. Although the prerequisite for this course is Intro. to Social Psychology, it goes without saying that those who have been exposed to other psychology classes and research assistantships will likely have an advantage in this course, because at the 400 level, your ability to perform well on tests depends to some degree on your accumulation of knowledge to date. Test scores won't be curved (unless necessary), but papers will be curved to a mean of 80.

Writing a good paper is a long and exacting process, so start early on this assignment. You need to write a paper that would be found acceptable by your peers in a professional world. Your paper will be graded along a number of dimensions, including:

Writing style: interesting to read, good organization, lack of redundancy or 'padding,' strong introduction and close, good comparison & contrast, clear phraseology, consistent prose--i.e., the "voice" doesn't shift about or become alternately formal and casual;

Analysis: good theory integration, good theoretical grasp, observations are well explicated, new material is evident in the paper and ideas are synthesized--i.e., the writers go beyond a mere rehash of the lectures by incorporating material from the student's own reading and thinking;

Proofreading: spelling, grammar;

Citations: proper use of citations, APA style bibliography;

Mechanics: correct length, 12-point Times Roman type or equivalent, double-spaced, APA-like margins and other mechanics.

For a top grade on the paper, remember the following points: 1) You must demonstrate an excellent grasp of influence theory and be able to relate it to your field observations. 2) Your writing voice must be clear and unencumbered. Don't obfuscate. Remember Mark Twain's famous dictum: "Eschew surplusage." 3) Bring something new and interesting into your papers. Teachers and TA's don't give top grades to mere rehashes of class lectures. Incorporate not only what you've read from the texts in this class, but also from additional research you've done in the library and other sources (including, perhaps, your personal experience, if relevant). 4) There's no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting. A single draft falls far short of what's required for a top grade. Hemingway rewrote Old Man and The Sea over 50 times, and he was an excellent writer to begin with! Now, we don't expect 50 rewrites or anything close to that, but the point is that rewriting, rather than the initial draft, results in a quality paper.

Finally, a note on APA style vs. Good Writing Style: I require APA style as a guide for general layout (margins, titles, citations, graphics, etc.) and the bibliography. For the actual writing style, however, I'd like you to avoid cumbersome third-person writing and stick to the first person (I, we, us, etc.). Write like you learned to write in your English 101 and 102 classes. If you're not an experienced writer, or think you may run into problems with this paper, you'll want to make an appointment at the Writing Center. Helping you write a good paper is their job. Also read Richard Lanham's very short (83 pp.) book, Revising Prose, before you start writing.

Week 1

Topics: Syllabus Review & History of Influence. Class Introduction.

Week 2

Events: Homework--Watch the video Tin Men. Sagarin guest vignette: Ethics & Defense
Topics: Methodological & Statistical Review; Ethics of Influence.

Week 3

Events: Homework: Read (or watch the video) Orwell's 1984.
In Class Video: Milgram's Experiment
Topics: Obedience & Authority; Mindful & Mindless behavior.

Week 4

Events: Homework--watch the optional video, The Grifters.
Topics: Liking & Similarity; Scarcity & Reactance.

Week 5

Events: Test 1; Homework--watch the video Twelve Angry Men.
Topics: Reciprocation & Social Proof; Test 1.

Week 6

Topics: Commitment & Consistency; Balance Theories & Cognitive Dissonance.

Week 7

Topics: Attitude: What it Is, How it Changes.

Week 8

Events: Neidert guest lecture: Behaviorism & Compliance.
Events: Butner guest vignette: Condo Sales Tactics.
Topics: Drives & Affect: Emotive Models, Mood, Fear; Sales & Advertising.

Week 9

Events: Outline for Team Paper (On Being A Target of Influence)
Topics: Compliance Models: SJT, HBM, TRA, PMT, & Others

Week 10

Events: Test 2
Topics: Cognitive Models & Test 2; The Elaboration Likelihood Model

Week 11

Events: Team Paper (On Being A Target of Influence) due
Topics: Central Processing, Reasoned Persuasion; Stylistic Variables.

Week 12

Events: Cialdini guest lecture: Moments of Power
Topics: Moderating Factors: Situation & Personality.

Week 13

Events: Outline for Individual Paper due
Topics: Big Influence-The Media & Influence Campaigns; Propaganda.

Week 14

Events: Guadagno guest vignette: Persuasion & Technology
Events: In Class Video: Anybody's Son Will Do
Topics: Indoctrination.

Week 15

Events: Test 3
Topics: Brainwashing & Mind Control; Cults & Test 4.

Week 16

Events: Individual Paper due
Topics: Cults continued; Summary & Review.

Week 17

Events: Final Exam (Test 4)

Copyright © 1997 by Kelton Rhoads, Ph.D.
www.workingpsychology.com
All rights reserved.

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