Influence: Science and Practice (20 page)

Now the harassments, the exertions, even the beatings of initiation rituals begin to make sense. The Thonga tribesman with tears in his eyes, watching his 10-year-old son tremble through a night on the cold ground of the “yard of mysteries,” the college sophomore punctuating his Hell Night paddling of his fraternity “little brother” with bursts of nervous laughter, these are not acts of sadism. They are acts of group survival. They function, oddly enough, to spur future society members to find the group more attractive and worthwhile. As long as it is the case that people like and believe in what they have struggled to get, these groups will continue to arrange effortful and troublesome initiation rites. The loyalty and dedication of those who emerge will increase to a great degree the chances of group cohesiveness and survival. Indeed, one study of 54 tribal cultures found that those
with the most dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies were those with the greatest group solidarity (Young, 1965). Given Aronson and Mills’ demonstration that the severity of an initiation ceremony significantly heightens the newcomer’s
commitment
to the group, it is hardly surprising that groups will oppose all attempts to eliminate this crucial link to their future strength.

Military groups and organizations are by no means exempt from these same processes. The agonies of “boot camp” initiations to the armed services are legendary and effective. The novelist William Styron testified to this effectiveness after recounting the misery of his own U.S. Marine concentration-camp-like “training nightmare:”

There is no ex-Marine of my acquaintance . . . who does not view the training as a crucible out of which he emerged in some way more resilient, simply braver and better for the wear. (Styron, 1977, p. 3)

Although the rigors of basic training are widely approved by military brass, a policy of “zero tolerance” is said to exist for incidents of aberrantly harsh hazing like those contained in two videotapes uncovered by TV news sources in 1997. The tapes depicted the practice of “blood pinning,” in which marine paratroopers who have completed 10 training jumps receive their golden wing pins. The pins, each with a pair of half-inch points protruding from the back, are affixed to an initiate’s shirt and then ground, punched, slammed, and slapped into his chest while he writhes and screams (Gleick, 1997). Despite claims of outrage and disgust from military leaders in the aftermath, only one of the 30 marines caught perpetrating the pain was recommended for discharge. A few were assigned to receive counseling, while the participation of most (20) was simply ignored. Official pronouncements of “zero tolerance” notwithstanding, I find it instructive that the slaps delivered to the initiates were thunderous and to the heart. But, to the initiators, they were light and to the wrist. Once again, it appears that, for groups concerned about fostering a lasting sense of solidarity and distinction, the hardship of demanding initiation activities will not be easily undermined.

The Inner Choice

Examination of such diverse activities as the indoctrination practices of the Chinese Communists and the initiation rituals of college fraternities provides some valuable information about commitment. It appears that the commitments most effective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior are those that are active, public, and effortful. However, there is another property of effective commitment more important than the other three combined. To understand what it is, we first need to solve a pair of puzzles in the actions of Communist interrogators and college fraternity brothers.

The first puzzle comes from the refusal of fraternity chapters to allow public-service activities to be part of their initiation ceremonies. Recall Walker’s survey
(1967), which reported that community projects, though frequent, were nearly always separated from the membership-induction program. Why? If an effortful commitment is what fraternities are after in their initiation rites, surely they could structure enough distasteful and strenuous civic activities for their pledges; there is plenty of exertion and unpleasantness to be found in the world of old-age-home repairs, mental-health-center yard work, and hospital bedpan duty. Besides, community-spirited endeavors of this sort would do much to improve the highly unfavorable public and media image of fraternity Hell Week rites; a survey (Phalen, 1951) showed that for every positive newspaper story concerning Hell Week, there were five negative stories. If only for public-relations reasons, then, fraternities should want to incorporate community-service efforts into their initiation practices. But they don’t.

To examine the second puzzle, we need to return to the Chinese prison camps of Korea and the political essay contests held for American captives. The Chinese wanted as many Americans as possible to enter these contests so that, in the process, they might write comments favorable to the Communist view. If, however, the idea was to attract large numbers of entrants, why were the prizes so small? A few extra cigarettes or a little fresh fruit were often all that a contest winner could expect. In the setting, even these prizes were valuable, but, still, there were much larger rewards—warm clothing, special mail privileges, increased freedom of movement in camp—that the Chinese could have used to increase the number of essay writers. Yet they specifically chose to employ the smaller rather than the larger, more motivating rewards.

Although the settings are quite different, the surveyed fraternities refused to allow civic activities into their initiation ceremonies for the same reason that the Chinese withheld large prizes in favor of less powerful inducements: They wanted the participants to
own
what they had done. No excuses, no ways out were allowed. A pledge who suffered through an arduous hazing could not be given the chance to believe he did so for charitable purposes. A prisoner who salted his political essay with anti-American comments could not be permitted to shrug it off as motivated by a big reward. No, the fraternity chapters and Chinese Communists were playing for keeps. It was not enough to wring commitments out of their men; those men had to be made to take inner responsibility for their actions.

Given the Chinese Communist government’s affinity for the political essay contest as a commitment device, it should come as no surprise that a wave of such contests appeared in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre in Tiannanmen Square, where pro-democracy protesters were gunned down by government soldiers. In Beijing alone, nine state-run newspapers and television stations sponsored essay competitions on the “quelling of the counterrevolutionary rebellion.” Still acting in accord with its long-standing and insightful de-emphasis of rewards for public commitments, the Beijing government left the contest prizes unspecified.

Social scientists have determined that
we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressure
. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform certain actions,
but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the acts.
³
Consequently, we won’t feel committed to them. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment.

³
In fact, large material rewards may even reduce or “undermine” our inner responsibility for an act, causing a subsequent reluctance to perform it when the reward is no longer present (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Higgins, Lee, Kwon, & Trope, 1995; Lepper & Greene, 1978).

All this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests that we should never heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the things we want them truly to believe in. Such pressures will probably produce temporary compliance with our wishes. However, if we want more than just that, if we want our children to believe in the correctness of what they have done, if we want them to continue to perform the desired behavior when we are not present to apply those outside pressures, then we must somehow arrange for them to accept inner responsibility for the actions we want them to take. An experiment by Jonathan Freedman (1965) gives us some hints about what to do and what not to do in this regard.

Freedman wanted to see if he could prevent second-to-fourth-grade boys from playing with a fascinating toy, just because he had said that it was wrong to do so some six weeks earlier. Anyone familiar with seven- to nine-year-old boys must realize the enormity of the task, but Freedman had a plan. If he could first get the boys to convince themselves that it was wrong to play with the forbidden toy, perhaps that belief would keep them from playing with it thereafter. The difficulty was making the boys believe that it was wrong to amuse themselves with the toy—an extremely expensive, battery-controlled robot.

Freedman knew it would be easy enough to have a boy obey temporarily. All he had to do was threaten the boy with severe consequences should he be caught playing with the toy. As long as he was nearby to deal out stiff punishment, Freedman figured that few boys would risk operating the robot. He was right. After showing a boy an array of five toys and warning him, “It is wrong to play with the robot. If you play with the robot, I’ll be very angry and will have to do something about it,” Freedman left the room for a few minutes. During that time, the boy was observed secretly through a one-way mirror. Freedman tried this threat procedure on 22 different boys, and 21 of them never touched the robot while he was gone.

So a strong threat was successful while the boys thought they might be caught and punished. Of course, Freedman had already guessed that. He was really interested in the effectiveness of the threat in guiding the boys’ behavior later on, when he was no longer around. To find out what would happen then, he sent a young woman back to the boys’ school about six weeks after he had been there. She took the boys out of the class one at a time to participate in an experiment. Without ever mentioning any connection with Freedman, she escorted each boy back to the room containing the five toys and gave him a drawing test. While she was scoring the test, she told the boy that he was free to play with any toy in the room. Of course, almost all of the boys played with a toy. The interesting result was that, of the boys who played with a toy, 77 percent chose to play with the robot that had been forbidden to them earlier. Freedman’s severe threat, which had been so successful six weeks before, was almost totally unsuccessful when he was no longer able to back it up with punishment.

However, Freedman wasn’t finished yet. He changed his procedure slightly with a second sample of boys. These boys, too, were initially shown the array of five toys by Freedman and warned not to play with the robot while he was briefly out of the room because “It is wrong to play with the robot.” This time, Freedman provided no strong threat to frighten a boy into obedience. He simply left the room and observed through the one-way mirror to see if his instruction against playing with the forbidden toy was enough. It was. Just as with the other sample, only 1 of the 22 boys touched the robot during the short time Freedman was gone.

The real difference between the two samples of boys came six weeks later, when they had a chance to play with the toys while Freedman was no longer around. An astonishing thing happened with the boys who earlier had been given no strong threat against playing with the robot: When given the freedom to play with any toy they wished, most avoided the robot, even though it was by far the most attractive of the five toys available (the others were a cheap plastic submarine, a child’s baseball glove without a ball, an unloaded toy rifle, and a toy tractor). When these boys played with one of the five toys, only 33 percent chose the robot.

Something dramatic had happened to both groups of boys. For the first group, it was the severe threat they heard from Freedman to back up his statement that playing with the robot was “wrong.” It had been quite effective, while Freedman could catch them violating his rule. Later, though, when he was no longer present to observe the boys’ behavior, his threat was impotent and his rule was, consequently, ignored. It seems clear that the threat had not taught the boys that operating the robot was wrong, only that it was unwise to do so when the possibility of punishment existed.

For the other boys, the dramatic event had come from inside, not outside. Freedman had instructed them, too, that playing with the robot was wrong, but he had added no threat of punishment should they disobey him. There were two important results. First, Freedman’s instruction alone was enough to prevent the boys from operating the robot while he was briefly out of the room. Second, the boys took personal responsibility for their choices to stay away from the robot during that time. They decided that they hadn’t played with it because
they
didn’t want to. After all, there were no strong punishments associated with the toy to explain their behavior otherwise. Thus, weeks later, when Freedman was nowhere around, they still ignored the robot because they had been changed inside to believe that they did not want to play with it.

Adults facing the child-rearing experience can take a cue from the Freedman study. Suppose a couple wants to impress upon their daughter that lying is wrong. A strong, clear threat (“It’s bad to lie, honey, so if I catch you at it, I’ll cut your tongue out”) might well be effective when the parents are present or when the girl
thinks she can be discovered. However, it will not achieve the larger goal of convincing her that she does not want to lie because
she
thinks it’s wrong. To do that, a much subtler approach is required. A reason must be given that is just strong enough to get her to be truthful most of the time but is not so strong that she sees it as the obvious reason for her truthfulness. It’s a tricky business because this barely sufficient reason changes from child to child. For one child, a simple appeal may be enough (“It’s bad to lie, honey, so I hope you won’t do it”); for another, it may be necessary to add a somewhat stronger reason (“. . . because if you do, I’ll be disappointed in you”); for a third child, a mild form of warning may be required as well (“. . . and I’ll probably have to do something I don’t want to do”). Wise parents will know which kind of reason will work on their own children. The important thing is to use a reason that will initially produce the desired behavior and will, at the same time, allow a child to take personal responsibility for that behavior. Thus, the less detectable outside pressure such a reason contains, the better. Selecting just the right reason is not an easy task for parents, but the effort should pay off. It is likely to mean the difference between short-lived compliance and long-term commitment. As Samuel Butler wrote more than 300 years ago, “He who agrees against his will / Is of the same opinion still.”