This review covers recent developments in the social influence literature, focusing primarily on compliance and conformity research published between 1997 and 2002. The principles and processes underlying a target's susceptibility to outside influences are considered in light of three goals fundamental to rewarding human functioning. Specifically, targets are motivated to form accurate perceptions of reality and react accordingly, to develop and preserve meaningful social relationships, and to maintain a favorable self-concept. Consistent with the current movement in compliance and conformity research, this review emphasizes the ways in which these goals interact with external forces to engender social influence processes that are subtle, indirect, and outside of awareness.

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Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity

How and why do moral judgments vary across the political spectrum? To test moral foundations theory (J. Haidt & J. Graham, 2007; J. Haidt & C. Joseph, 2004), the authors developed several ways to measure people's use of 5 sets of moral intuitions: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity. Across 4 studies using multiple methods, liberals consistently showed greater endorsement and use of the Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity foundations compared to the other 3 foundations, whereas conservatives endorsed and used the 5 foundations more equally. This difference was observed in abstract assessments of the moral relevance of foundation-related concerns such as violence or loyalty (Study 1), moral judgments of statements and scenarios (Study 2), "sacredness" reactions to taboo trade-offs (Study 3), and use of foundation-related words in the moral texts of religious sermons (Study 4). These findings help to illuminate the nature and intractability of moral disagreements in the American "culture war."

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Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations

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The Psychology of Sunk Cost

Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will -- those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

The Illusion of Conscious Will

This study addressed the ill-understood issue of how loyalty develops in service patrons. Although many theorists hold commitment to be an essential part of this process, the link between commitment and loyalty has received little empirical attention. To address this void, the study first portrayed commitment’s root tendency to resist changing preference as a function of three antecedent processes. Second, this portrayal formed the basis for developing a psychometrically sound scale to measure the construct of commitment. Third, the scale was then used in a mediating effects model (M-E-M) to test the commitment-loyalty link. Path analyses found this parsimonious structure to be a significant improvement over rival direct effects models (D-E-Ms). Results found the tendency to resist changing preference to be a key precursor to loyalty, largely explained by a patron’s willingness to identify with a brand. Implications of these findings for loyalty’s development and research are explored.

Analyzing the commitment-loyalty link in service contexts

FORMS FOR THE THERAPIST. Allan G. Hedberg (Ed.) (2010). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Reviewed by Christopher H. Rosik (Link Care Center, Fresno, CA; Fresno Pacific University). Allan Hedberg is a seasoned psychologist and former president of the California Psychological Association. His considerable experience as a clinician is evident in this impressive volume that makes a wealth of useful material readily available to therapists seeking to establish or enhance their practice. Moreover, Dr. Hedberg enlisted the contributions of sixteen other experienced professionals to provide helpful resources in seven areas: Information for the therapist, assessment tools, patient homework or assignment outside therapy, information for the patient, exercises to be performed in therapy, forms to be completed by the therapist or patient, and sample forms and templates. Multiple indexes and pictorial legends help to direct the clinician to the exact page where the needed form is presented. In addition, purchase of the book enables the user to access a website where all of the forms can be downloaded, so no bindingbreaking copying is necessary. It is impossible to review all of the valuable forms compiled in this text, but the list of chapter titles can provide some basic orientation to what this book offers. Chapters include Forms for setting up and defining your practice; Forms related to fees; HIPAA/Patient privacy forms; General information handouts for patients; Forms related to referral and consulting services; Fitness for duty and workers' compensation forms; Forms related to patient services; Forms related to therapist's professional activity; Managing an office staff; Termination of treatment/practice forms; Forms for session notes; Clinical errors, bad habits, ethical complaints, and law suits; Expanding your practice; Organizing your charts and evaluations; General assessments, intake, brief, comprehensive, and more; Assessments related to specific tests and scales; Assessments related to risk, competency, health, and neuropsychology; Anxiety and stress relief with relaxation assessment and exercises; Depression and self-esteem; Insomnia and sleep therapy; Addictive behavior; Suicidal behavior; Pain management and coping with medical disorders; Anger and violent behavior; Strategies and tools for personal growth and health awareness; Communication tips and exercises; eating and exercise logs; Cultural diversity appreciation exercises; Conflict resolution and problem solving; Thinking distortions: Information and patient exercises; eating and exercise logs; Cultural diversity appreciation exercises; Conflict resolution and problem solving; Thinking distortions: Information and patient exercises; Behavioral monitoring logs; Dealing with crisis; Serving children and their families; Dealing with geriatric patients; Couples therapy and relationship assessment and exercises. …

The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach

THE END OF FAITH: RELIGION, TERROR, AND THE FUTURE OF REASON. Sam Harris. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Pp. 348, $13-95. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Evangel University/Springfield, MO). The 9/11 Islamic terrorists emblazoned the psychological truism of the path from belief to behavior on the minds of millions. The world saw the lethiferous power of religious belief. We witnessed the purpose driven death. Sam Harris pummels readers with invidious images of destruction associated with religious belief. We may well dispute many of his conclusions, but the ineluctable truth is that belief matters. At times acerbic, Harris has prepared a puissant polemic focused primarily upon the terror of Islam with ample scathing visited upon Christianity and Judaism. His thesis is that the beliefs of religious people have become unhinged from reason to the point that meaningful conversations cannot take place. He asserts that reason is in exile (chapter one) and that survival requires a return from unproven beliefs to evidence-based reason when making decisions that affect human life. In chapters two and three, Harris examines the notion of belief and the manner in which numerous contradictory beliefs are accumulated from early authority figures. He notes important findings that people are conservative - they do not easily give up beliefs. As beliefs develop into a worldview, a subset deals with matters of religious faith. By way of example, Harris shows the importance of re-examining beliefs that can have powerful consequences on health and wellbeing. Harris provides two historical examples of the inquisition and the holocaust to demonstrate the incredible power of malevolent belief systems to wreak havoc in the lives of hapless victims. Harris wages war on Islam in chapter four. His major point is that there is a reason we are facing Islamic terrorists rather than people of another faith - the principle of jihad. He acknowledges that apologists for Islam interpret the jihad as a personal struggle, but warns of those warriors who believe in a holy war against all non-Muslims, who are by definition infidels or apostate. To further his point, he quotes several hadithic lines that encourage war on earth and promise eternal rewards for martyrs. He follows this litany with a list of massacres and pogroms against Jews and quotations from Pew Research that support an alarmingly high percentage of people in various countries that affirm the justification of suicide bombing in the name of Islam (e.g., Lebanon 73%, Ivory Coast 56%). In West of Eden (chapter 5), the author challenges the extant American theocracy, which is primarily an attack on the two-term presidency of George W. Bush and the values of Christian fundamentalists that he believes were foisted on the general public. This analysis appears a bit dated given the 2008 presidential election. However, there are clearly laws and political positions related to such issues as abortion, stem cell research, certain substances (e. …

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

University of Notre DameJohn A. MillerOhio State UniversityThe low-ball technique, a tactic often used by automobile sales dealers toproduce compliance from customers, was examined in a set of three experi-ments. In all three studies, a requester who induced subjects to make aninitial decision to perform a target behavior and who then made performanceof the behavior more costly obtained greater final compliance than a requesterwho informed subjects of the full costs of the target behavior from the outset.The low-ball phenomenonthat an active preliminary decision to take anaction tends to persevere even after the costs of performing the action havebeen increasedwas found to be reliable (Experiment 1), different from thefoot-in-the-door effect (Experiment 2), and effective only when the preliminarydecision was made with a high degree of choice (Experiment 3). In competi-tion with three other conceptual explanations, a formulation based on the con-cept of commitment was seen to best account for the results. An ecologicallyderived strategy for the identification and investigation of research questionswas used and discussed.Social psychologists have recently begun toexamine the effects of a variety of factors onthe likelihood that one person will complywith a request from another (cf. Cialdini &Schroeder, 1976). These investigations havegenerally used a similar epistemological se-quence in attempting to uncover the psycho-logical processes that influence compliancebehavior. Typically, factors likely to affectthe tendency to comply with a request havebeen identified on the basis of existing psy-chological theory. Once selected in this man-ner, the variables are submitted to experi-mental test to determine whether they doinfluence compliance probabilities accordingto prediction.

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Low-ball procedure for producing compliance: Commitment then cost.

MORAL TRIBES: EMOTION, REASON, AND THE GAP BETWEEN US AND THEM, Joshua Greene, New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2013, Pp. 422. ISBN: 978-1-101-63867-5 Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Springfield, MO).Joshua Greene invites us to consider the problem of morality by pitting the rights of one group against those of another group who must share common resources in order to survive. In a highly readable style, Greene leads us through classic runaway trolley dilemmas, philosophical conundrums, and neuropsychological investigations to an understanding of how moral psychology informs moral philosophy and offers a groundwork for a metamorality. Joshua Greene is an associate professor in the Psychology Department of Harvard University. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton.Early on Greene sets the social context for the importance of his work. We are members of different moral tribes-groups with different moral values. These values work pretty well most of the time within our tribe but when we encounter other tribes (think conservative vs. liberal political or religious groups) we have a problem which often seems impassable. Not surprisingly, Greene finds controversial issues are matters of sex and death.The tribal differences that erupt into public controversy typically concern sex (e.g., gay marriage, gays in the military, and the sex lives of public officials) and death at the margins of life (e.g., abortion, physician-assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells in research). That such issues are moral issues is surely not arbitrary. Sex and death are the gas pedals and brakes of tribal growth . . . What's less clear is why different tribes hold different views about sex, life, and death, and why some tribes are more willing than others to impose their views on outsiders (p. 11).Greene's purpose is to understand morality. He wants to analyze the core of morality and how it works in our brains. Ultimately, he wishes to offer a solution-a way past the moral dilemmas of our time. The book is organized into 12 chapters spread over five parts. At the risk of being incomplete, I will summarize several subthemes, which I consider most relevant to readers of JPC. After making the case for the importance of resolving moral differences in a more amicable way than the history of war suggests, Greene offers a functionalist definition of morality as "a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation (23)." Greene postulates that humans learned to cooperate in order to survive, which sounds like a common sense speculation about the evolutionary origins of complex behavior. Presumably, those who are more altruistic and willing to consider the wellbeing of others will more likely survive than those who go it alone. But the problem is, we only cooperate with those we consider part of our tribe. And we do not naturally cooperate with those from other tribes.In Part I, Greene reviews a number of studies to illustrate the problems inherent in cooperating with others who do not easily resemble members of our tribe. Even 6-month old infants show a preference for those who speak with a local accent. Of course, as the trappings of culture accumulate so do the markers of Us vs. Them. Greene also concerns himself with explaining the psychology of cooperation within groups. We learn about reciprocity norms and the social punishments that can eventually force a person outside a group for violating tribal rules. Matters of honor, reputation, and free-riding are a few of the issues considered. In the end, we learn the importance of valuing moral diversity if we are to hope for peaceful interactions with those from other tribes. …

Rodney L. Bassett

Papers

The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Low-ball procedure for producing compliance: Commitment then cost.

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them

Strengthquest: Discover and Develop Your Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond