You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Yvain comments on Open Thread, March 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 01 March 2012 08:51AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (102)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Yvain 08 March 2012 06:17:34PM 4 points [-]

Seen here:

Harvard psychologist and APS Fellow and Charter Member Ellen Langer observed similar rule-based behavior in a typical office setting. She had researchers ask if they could cut in line to use a copy machine. When they simply said, “Excuse me, may I use the copy machine?”, only 60 percent of the subjects complied. When the researchers gave a reason — “Excuse me, may I use the copy machine because I’m in a rush?” — 94 percent said yes. Langer tested this one more time with the phrase, “Excuse me, may I use the copy machine because I need to make some copies,” and again 93 percent of respondents agreed — despite the fact that “I need to make some copies” is not really a very good reason for cutting in line. The way Langer and Cialdini describe it, people hear the word “because” and assume that there is a good reason. That is to say, the word “because” is a shortcut people use to distinguish between good arguments and bad. "

Comment author: Will_Newsome 08 March 2012 09:04:30PM 1 point [-]

Many results like those can be found in this book which I found very much superior to Cialdini's Influence.

Comment author: Anubhav 09 March 2012 07:40:27AM *  0 points [-]

The link doesn't seem to have anything to do with the quote.

Is this some sort of metacommentary? ("People see a link and assume there is a good source"?)

Edit: Probably meant to link here. (Google cache)