Psychology: Influence techniques revealed - We have the same birthday! (Part 1)

Another situation in which we tend to be more compliant is when somebody tells us, well, what a coincidence, we have the same birthday. Initial evidence for this stems from the study by Finch and Cialdini published in 1989 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and in this study 148 students received a text on Rasputin. Maybe you know Rasputin. He is a historical figure from Russia and the text they had to read about Rasputin was Rasputin the mad monk of Russia and in this text they could read about the tricks of Rasputin to stay in positions of power. Afterwards they were told, okay, please evaluate Rasputin in terms of his personality. There was only one difference between the two groups. In one group Rasputin's birthday was changed and in their text his birthday was exactly on the same day as the birthday of the participant and when the participants thought, well, this guy has the same birthday as I have, they rated Rasputin much more positive in comparison to the control group. They said he's stronger, he's not the evil guy, he's more a good guy and he's more pleasant. So just from the fact that this guy has the same birthday as they had, their opinion of Rasputin had become much better. But as we can see from the next study, not only your opinion might be influenced but also your behavior, your helping behavior, your willingness to help somebody might change if you see, well, she or he has the same birthday as I have. And in this study 75 students were invited to the university lab and they were told, well, we are conducting a study on astrology and we are interested in whether your birthday affects your personality. And seemingly to save some time, the participants were always invited in pairs of two. But what the participants did not know was that the second person was in fact a confederate of the experimenter. And after they had filled out their questionnaire, the experimenter collected the questionnaires and said, wow, that's interesting, you two have the same birthday. And of course, the subjects were somewhat surprised, but the confederate did not go further on the matter. There was just this little information, well, you have the same birthday. But when they left the room, when the participants thought, well, the experiment is over, the experiment actually wasn't over because now the confederate asked the participant to do her a favor. She said, well, for our English class, we had to write an eight page essay and we are told to find somebody to critique this essay. So could you write me one page of feedback on my essay? You just have to write whether my arguments are persuasive and why. That would be great if you could do that. And when the participants thought that the other person had the same birthday, the compliance rate was almost twice as high as in the control condition. 62% were willing to help, whereas in the control condition, only about 34% were willing to critique her essay.