“If You Can’t Dazzle Them with Brilliance, Baffle Them with Nonsense”: Extending the Impact of the Disrupt-Then-Reframe Technique of Social Influence

Three experiments extended earlier findings on the impact of the Disrupt-Then-Reframe (DTR) technique on compliance. This technique is comprised of a subtle, odd element in a typical scripted request, the "disruption," followed by a persuasive phrase, the "reframing." Based on the thought-disruption hypothesis (Petty & Wegener, 1999), we argue that its impact is generalizable across situations and that disrupting a conventional sales script not only increases the impact of the new reframing, but also increases susceptibility to influence resulting from other (congruence-based) persuasion techniques embedded in the influence setting. Three experiments provided support for our expectations. Specifically, the DTR technique reduced the extent of counter-argumentation to a sales script and boosted the impact of two other persuasion techniques: the continued questions procedure and message-goal congruence. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

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