Acquisition of rules for the selection of compliance-gaining strategies.

摘要

This dissertation examines the cognitive processes whereby a compliance-gaining goal and configuration of situational features influence the retrieval of a compliance-gaining strategy. Such rules may involve associations between a particular strategy and a schema abstracted from multiple experiences of similar compliance-gaining situations. Employing a method similar to that utilized in past research on prototype abstraction, two experiments investigated whether individuals can acquire rules of this form.;In Experiment 1, subjects learned whether the correct strategy was "hesitant" or "assertive" for sixteen hypothetical compliance-gaining situations (four instances each of four situation schemas). A different critical feature was dropped from each instance of a schema. Transfer performance on new instances was significantly above chance both when they contained requests similar to one in a learning instance and when they contained different requests. On a recognition test, subjects indicated which of two phrases had appeared in the original transfer situation. The incorrect option contained either a schema-consistent value or a schema-inconsistent value of the dimension omitted in the original transfer situation. For situations containing similar request types, recognition accuracy was significantly poorer when the incorrect option was schema-consistent than when it was schema-inconsistent. However, this effect did not occur for situations containing different request types.;In Experiment 2, subjects read 48 situations (sixteen instances each of three schemas) one time only and, for each, decided whether the correct strategy was "hesitant", "assertive" or "courteous". Feedback was provided after each decision. For two of the three schemas, transfer performance was not significantly influenced by whether instances contained a request type repeated during the learning phase, a request similar to one in a learning instance, or a different request. On a memory test, significantly poorer recognition accuracy occurred when the incorrect option was schema-consistent than when it was schema-inconsistent for situations containing repeated request types or different requests. The effect was small for situations with similar requests.;Overall, the results reinforce the hypothesis that schemas acquired through encounters with specific instances may mediate the selection of compliance-gaining strategies. Further detailed tests of this hypothesis are possible from additional aspects of the present data.