Giving people the words to say no leads them to feel freer to say yes

We examine how to structure requests to help people feel they can say no (or yes) more voluntarily. Specifically, we examine the effect of having the requester provide the request-target with an explicit phrase they can use to decline requests. Part of the difficulty of saying no is finding the word...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2024-01, Vol.14 (1), p.576-576, Article 576
Main Authors: Schlund, Rachel, Sommers, Roseanna, Bohns, Vanessa K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/477
631/477/2811
Behavior
Compliance
Consent
Data collection
Emotions
Garbage
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Intervention
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:We examine how to structure requests to help people feel they can say no (or yes) more voluntarily. Specifically, we examine the effect of having the requester provide the request-target with an explicit phrase they can use to decline requests. Part of the difficulty of saying no is finding the words to do so when put on the spot. Providing individuals with an explicit script they can use to decline a request may help override implicit scripts and norms of politeness that generally dictate compliance. This should make individuals feel more comfortable refusing requests and make agreement feel more voluntary. Hence, we hypothesized that telling people how to say no (by providing them with an explicit script) would make compliance decisions feel more voluntary above and beyond merely telling them they can say no. Across two experimental lab studies ( N  = 535), we find support for this prediction.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-023-50532-3