The Principle of Consistency: People desire to be and look consistent in their words, beliefs, attitudes, and deeds. Active, effortful, and uncoerced are the most effective at determining future compliance. Commitment decisions (even poor ones) often endure because we instinctively add new reasons to justify/rationalize our decisions. (paraphrased from pg. 95, Influence: Science and Practice (5th ed.) by Robert B. Cialdini (2009; Pearson Education Inc.).
Quotes:
“But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” (St. Matthew 5:37)
“Better not to vow than to vow and not pay.” (Ecclesiastes 5:5)
“Do or do not, there is no trying.” (Yoda, in The Empire Strike Back)
“These raysyns ben sowre and yf I had some I wold not ete them” (The Fox and the Grapes, by Aesop)
“”Unto an evil counselor close heart and ear and eye, // And take a lesson from this tale of the spider and the fly.” (Mary Howitt, “The Spider and the Fly”)
Summary:
We have an instinctive desire to be and to appear consistent to our self-image and to the commitments we have made. This works well for us when our self-image is the one God gave us and our commitments are good ones; what if they aren’t? What if selfish (or even wicked) people manipulate us into making harmful commitments? What if our desire for consistency leads us to rationalize sinful behavior? What if such rationalizations lead to the creation of a new self-image based on sin and the world’s fallenness? More generally, is it moral for the Church to work with our psychological instincts to increase our commitment to Orthodoxy?
Introduction: are we really wired to be consistent?
Experimental research has done a good job establishing that our instinct for consistency affects our behavior. In fact, the “principle of consistency” is usually thought of as an implication of “cognitive dissonance”, one of the strongest findings in social psychology. Some of the more persuasive and interesting experiments/observations describing how it works include (all of these come from the chapter on consistency in Cialdini’s book (2009)):
The shortage of hyped toys before Christmas. The logic of supply and demand is not enough to explain why highly-hyped toys are in such low supply before Christmas. Rather, toy makers/retailers are taking advantage of parents’ instinct for consistency to increase revenues. Here is how it works: children see the commercials for the special toy and ask their parents for it. Parents commit to getting the special toy, are unable to find the toy in time for Christmas, end up purchasing other toys for their children to open at Christmas, but still follow through with the purchase of the special toy once it becomes available after Christmas.
The “low-ball” and “foot in the door” sales techniques. The “low ball” works by getting the customer to commit to the purchase of a certain item based on a certain price. The commitment will remain even after the price is later raised due to allegedly outside the control of the salesman. The “foot in the “door” technique works by getting the customer to commit to something very minor. This then makes them much more amenable to larger commitments later on.
The manipulation of American POW’s at Chinese Communist POW Camps. Unlike the North Koreans, the Chinese used subtle methods to gain compliance. They found that getting POW’s to commit verbally or (better yet) in writing to something very minor (e.g. “the US Government is not perfect”), that the POW’s attitude towards Communism and the USA actually changed. They were also more willing to do other things that they would otherwise have resisted as “collaboration”.
Deutsch and Gerard (1955) experiments about variable commitment to estimates. These studies demonstrated that people who wrote down their opinions develop much more of an attachment to them than those who did not, and that this attachment grew if the opinion was made public.
Voluntary hazing and imposition of high-entrance costs for group-membership. High entrance costs increase the commitment of members to their group, especially if membership is voluntary. Despite my long association with the military, my favorite example of this was the experiment where the researchers started an intentionally dull discussion group. People who had to sacrifice something to get into the group were happy with the discussions. Those who did not, found the group boring.
“Desirable Toy” experiments. Children that were discouraged from playing with a certain desirable toy with threats did not play with it as long as an enforcer was around, but would single out the toy for play in the future. Children that were more subtly discouraged from playing with a certain desirable toy would continued to eschew the toy even in a future session. The “voluntarily” commitment had led them to internalize the prohibition.
Saving energy for publicity… or not. This one is subtle. People who were promised a reward (getting their names listed in the paper) for conserving energy did not conserve much more than the control group. But the group that were promised this reward, then had the promise removed actually conserved much more. The explanation is that the reward kept the people from considering themselves “true” conservationists. Once the promise of reward was removed, they were able to completely commit to their new identity and then act accordingly.
The fact that unscrupulous salesmen us this is not surprising…
But what about the Church? Are you surprised that it uses similar methods? I can quickly come up with several ways that the Church capitalizes on our instinct for commitment:
Long catechumenate. The Orthodox Church has high entrance costs for converts. This probably has the effect of increasing their commitment to the Church (some potential converts and converts have expressed bitterness at both the fact that “cradle Orthodox” are excused from this and that many “cradle Orthodox” do not seem to share their commitment).
Public declaration of the Creed; public participation in Confession and Communion. We say/sing the Creed every time we attend Divine Liturgy. This builds our commitment to the Church (just as daily recitation of the “Pledge of Allegiance” builds commitment to our country and its ideals). The same goes for going up to the front of the Church for Communion and Confession.
Public Weddings. One of the desired effects of making such a big deal about sacramental weddings is to build commitment to the marriage. Remember that people enjoyed even boring groups if they had to pay a personal price to join them!
Free will commitment to the norms of the Church. No one is forced to come to Church or to be Orthodox. When we recognize “free will”, we gain a stronger commitment from those who do come. A corollary of this is that even children who really have no choice about attendance should be manipulated so that they do not feel like they are being forced to go.
Does this bother you? Is it moral to use techniques of persuasion to get people to do (or better yet, get them to want to do ) what we believe is good for them?
A military analogy…
I served for several years as an Army interrogator. We were trained to manipulate people into giving us information. Despite the bad press interrogators have received, we were NOT trained to hurt people (or even to make them uncomfortable). In fact, we were not even allowed to promise or threaten them with things that we could not deliver on (i.e. we could not “lie” to them… although we were not required to disclose our true name/rank to them). The trick was to use psychological mechanisms of influence (like commitment and social proof) to develop rapport and gain voluntary compliance. While I was not called on to actually interrogate prisoners of war, I would not have hesitated to do these things. But what about parishioners? What about inquirers? As pointed out above, many of the things that we do “In Church” work to our sanctification because they are in synch with the way our minds work. Despite Soviet propaganda, the Church did not explicitly design our worship and disciplines in order to dupe – or even manipulate – anyone. It is an organic and holistic expression of Orthodox anthropology and the economy of salvation.
One of the things that really impressed me when I first went to worship in an Orthodox Church was “wow, this is how I would expect people to worship if God was real”. This does not imply that non-Orthodox Christians do not believe that God is real: I know better. But Orthodox worship captures the full implications of God’s Incarnation and Resurrection. It envelops the entirety of our humanity through all of our senses and all that capacities of our minds & spirits. We naturally fit into the Church because it has a place within it designed ESPECIALLY FOR EACH OF US. Not just our logical capacity (i.e. the ability to confess Christ as Savior), but all that is truly human within us, to include our logical capacity, our compassion, our need for community, and even our instinct for consistency.
If I have convinced you…
Then what else could/should we do help people grow in Christ? What are the implications of the instinct of consistency? I really want to hear what you think (to include helping me flesh out the list of things that we already do – the one I present above is the result of a quick brainstorm (and the lightning flashes pretty dim in my gray matter)).
Let me share a couple of possibilities that occur to me:
Homilies and instruction should first remind people of who they are; then go on to spell out the specific requirements. As long as the speaker is credible (I’ll write more on that in future posts), then consistency should lead them to work towards satisfying the requirements.
Homilies and instruction that use threats or even inducements to encourage people to behave in a Christian manner may well be counter-productive. People’s behavior may well change (and remain “changed” as long as they know God is watching and judging), but sanctification is not primarily about behavior. Works without love are dead. Threats and inducements are demonstrated impediments to internal change.
Again, this is a work in progress and I would really like your input. Like sanctification, theology is accomplished in community!
