Preference for consistency and social influence: A review of current research findings

Throughout the history of social psychology there has been a strong and long-standing belief that individuals are generally consistent within their attitudes and behaviors; yet there is a track record of small effect sizes and difficulty in replicating findings involving consistency-based phenomena. To address this discontinuity, Cialdini, Trost, and Newsom (1995) developed a scale to assess individual differences in preference for consistency (PFC)—differences that they argued might account for the puzzling pattern. The PFC scale measures individual differences in the desire to be consistent, to be perceived as consistent, and for others to be consistent. This paper reviews the literature on social influence and PFC and evaluates the contribution this scale has made to the social influence literature in years since its initial introduction.

[1]  R. Cialdini,et al.  When Saying Yes Leads to Saying No: Preference for Consistency and the Reverse Foot-in-the-Door Effect , 2001 .

[2]  Robert B. Cialdini,et al.  Evidence of a positive relationship between age and preference for consistency , 2005 .

[3]  L. Festinger,et al.  A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance , 2017 .

[4]  R. Cialdini.  Influence: Science and Practice , 1984 .

[5]  Ginamarie Scott,et al.  A validation study of the preference for consistency scale , 2001 .

[6]  P. Zimbardo,et al.  Who's Smoking, Drinking, and Using Drugs? Time Perspective as a Predictor of Substance Use , 1999 .

[7]  R. Cialdini,et al.  Preference for Consistency: The Development of a Valid Measure and the Discovery of Surprising Behavioral Implications , 1995 .

[8]  M. Zanna,et al.  Thinking and caring about cognitive inconsistency: when and for whom does attitudinal ambivalence feel uncomfortable? , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[9]  Robert Vicent Joule,et al.  The Lure: A New Compliance Procedure , 1989 .

[10]  R. Cialdini,et al.  The nature of consistency motivation: Consistency, aconsistency, and anticonsistency in a dissonance paradigm , 2006 .

[11]  F. Heider.  Attitudes and cognitive organization. , 1946, The Journal of psychology.

[12]  G. Bohner,et al.  Reducing prejudice via cognitive dissonance: Individual differences in preference for consistency moderate the effects of counter-attitudinal advocacy , 2010 .

[13]  Jonathan E. Butner,et al.  Compliance with a Request in Two Cultures: The Differential Influence of Social Proof and Commitment/Consistency on Collectivists and Individualists , 1999 .

[14]  T. Newcomb.  An approach to the study of communicative acts. , 1953, Psychological review.

[15]  R. Cialdini,et al.  Consistency-based compliance across cultures☆ , 2007 .

[16]  K. Bedell,et al.  Should President Clinton be prosecuted for perjury? The effects of preference for consistency, self-esteem, and political party affiliation , 2003 .

[17]  J. Burger.  The Foot-in-the-Door Compliance Procedure: A Multiple-Process Analysis and Review , 1999, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[18]  S. Shyam Sundar,et al.  Loyalty to computer terminals: is it anthropomorphism or consistency? , 2004, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[19]  J. Freedman,et al.  Compliance without pressure: the foot-in-the-door technique. , 1966, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[20]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Low-ball procedure for producing compliance: Commitment then cost. , 1978 .

[21]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .