Our consideration of distraction and disruption has been informed by Milton H. Erickson’s conversational approach to hypnosis (Erickson, Rossi, & Rossi, 1976). Erickson realized that people who showed up in his office to be hyp-notized were nonetheless resistant to the idea. They were caught in an approach–
avoidance conflict. Consciously, they desired hypnosis enough to show up at the office, but unconsciously, they were still wary enough to resist a direct induction. Erickson developed a number of ways to counteract and deactivate the resistance so that the desire to be hypnotized could be met.
One class of hypnotic induction techniques employed “confusion” as the deactivating mechanism (Erickson, 1964; Gilligan, 1987). Confusion techniques started with a reasonable, unconfusing story that unfolded according to an ex-pected script. When the patient was at ease with the story and where it was going, Erickson would insert an unexpected and confusing element and follow it immediately with a direct request to go into trance. Erickson believed that the
confusion did two things. First, the confusing statements drew critical attention, as the patient tried to figure out what Erickson meant, leaving little attention left over to resist the induction. Second, the confusing statements created an uncomfortable uncertainty about what was happening, an uncertainty that the patient could alleviate by following the hypnotic suggestion.
Gilligan (1987) tells a story about a patient who came from a long distance to be hypnotized by the famous therapist, Erickson. Upon entering Erickson’s office, the patient extended his hand in greeting. Erickson took the hand, shook it the nor-mal three times, then shook it another five times, more slowly. Then, still holding on to the patient’s hand, he raised his hand up to the level of their heads and said,
“You are here to be hypnotized. You may go into a trance now.” Erickson reported that the patient immediately went into a trance and the session began.
In another example (Rosen, 1991, pp. 79–80), a prominent physician, a par-ticularly resistant patient, a came to Erickson for hypnotic treatment. The phy-sician began by insisting that Erickson hypnotize him, a challenge that was a harbinger of failure. Erickson tried several commonplace techniques and, as expected, they all failed. Then Erickson went to his housekeeper, a young woman named Ilse, who was a frequent and easy hypnotic subject. He put Ilse into a somnabulistic trance, brought her into the room with the physician, raised Ilse’s hand over her head, and left it in that position. Then Erickson said, “Ilse, go over there next to the man. I want you to stand like that until you put him into a trance. I’ll come back in fifteen minutes” (Rosen, 1991, p. 79). Rosen reports that when Erickson returned, the physician was also in a deep trance.
Rosen’s explanation was that the physician was intent on resisting every active hypnotic induction, but he became confused by and unable to resist Ilse who was completely inactive. A second element in this induction was that the phy-sician had focused his resistance on Erickson and was not able to shift easily to resist another agent.
Erickson’s consideration of conversational hypnotism can be very informative for social influence (Sherman, 1988). It focuses on the words, meanings of words, and phrasing within the message. Erickson’s hypnotic techniques have been applied to sales situations in a very thorough and detailed book by Moine and Lloyd (1990) entitled Unlimited Selling Power: How to Master Hypnotic Selling Skills. The book similarly focuses on the microprocesses of persuasion.
Erickson’s confusion techniques are different from the distractions used in the typical attitude change experiment, and they seem to invoke different pro-cesses. Whereas external distractions, such as flashing lights, overwhelm thoughts about the message, the disruptions that Erickson used to create con-fusion (a) are part of the message, (b) create concon-fusion about the meaning of the message, and (c) promote a reframing of the meaning of the message.
Santos, Leve, and Pratkanis (1994) demonstrated a confusion technique ap-plied to panhandling. Panhandling student experimenters who asked for “some change” received a donation 44% of the time. Being specific and asking for “a quarter” raised this rate to 64%. Being confusing—asking for “37 cents”—
produced the highest rate of compliance, at 75%. The “37 cent” request was a
central part of the message, invoked confusion about the reason for the speci-ficity, and resulted in people thinking that the requester had a specific purpose in mind.
This process of a disruption promoting a reframing of the meaning of a situation is the process of change described in Action Identification Theory (Vallacher & Wegner, 1985, 1987; Nowak & Vallacher, 1998). Vallacher and Wegner (1985) described an “Action Identification” as a label applied to an action sequence. The label invokes a schema and a script for action. Golf may be skill mastery for one person, but exercise for another. Once an identification snaps in, it assimilates facts and interpretations to it. Thus, it is very hard to change an action identification.
Vallacher and Wegner noted that to replace one action identification with another, one has to first disrupt the active identification. When an action iden-tification is disrupted, when it doesn’t work for the present situation, the person moves to a lower level, more detailed, and with more particular identification of action. Thus, when “driving the golf ball” produces a pronounced slice, the golfer moves attention to lower-level action identifications, to “setting the over-lapping grip,” “assuming the correct stance,” “keeping the head down,” and so on. Once lower-level action identifications regain control over the action se-quence, then identification can move back to a higher level, but it may be a different higher level, a new conceptualization, a reframing.
Vallacher and Wegner conducted a number of studies to show this process of disrupting an action identification, moving the attention to lower-level iden-tifications, then providing a reframing of the lower-level actions. In one study, students were instructed to eat Cheetos with their hands or with a pair of chop-sticks (Vallacher & Wegner, 1985). In another study, students had to drink coffee out of a normal cup or a custom mug made unwieldy by a pound of shot in its base. Students drank this coffee while listening to a persuasive message that reported that coffee drinkers are the kind of people who seek stimulation or who avoid stimulation. The disruption of the normal activity made partici-pants more susceptible to a persuasive message about the activity. The unwieldy mug made the message more persuasive, whereas a normal cup did not.
Davis and Knowles (1999) applied the disruption techniques of Erickson (1964) and Vallacher and Wegner (1985) to a sales situation, using a procedure they called the disrupt-then-reframe technique. In this technique, a reasonable and understandable offer is disrupted in a minor way by using an odd phrase or a slight speech dysfluency that is followed immediately by a persuasive mes-sage. They found that the message was more persuasive following the speech disruption than without the speech disruption.
Davis and Knowles had experimenters go door-to-door selling note cards for a local charity. In the normal sales condition, the experimenters ended their pitch by saying, “We’re selling this pack of eight note cards for three dollars.
They are a bargain. Would you buy some?” They sold cards to about 35% of the households. In the disrupt-then-reframe condition, experimenters said,
“We’re selling this pack of eight note cards for three hundred pennies. They are
TABLE 7.3
Three Studies of the Disrupt-then-Reframe Technique
Condition Study 1 Study 2 Study 3
DTR (disrupt-then-reframe)
“They’re three hundred pennies. They’re a bargain.”
65% 70% 65%
Price only
“They’re three dollars”
35% 25% 30%
Reframe only
“Three dollars. They’re a bargain.”
35% 30% —
Disrupt only
“They’re 300 pennies.”
— 35% —
Reframe-then-disrupt
“They’re a bargain at three hundred pennies.”
— — 25%
a bargain. Would you buy some?” Sales nearly doubled, to 65% of the house-holds. Davis and Knowles replicated this study with several comparison groups.
Table 7.3 shows the various studies, comparison groups, and percentage sales.
The disruption by itself and the reframe by itself failed to increase sales. The increased sales occurred only when the disruption was followed by the reframe.
Particularly telling were low sales in the condition where the reframe occurred before the disruption. Saying that the cards “were a bargain at three hundred pennies” produced 25% sales, whereas saying that the cards “at three hundred pennies were a bargain” produced 65% sales.
The effect is not due to a frame of reference mechanism, comparing 300 to 3, or pennies to dollars. We have replicated this basic pattern selling “halfcakes”
instead of “cupcakes” with the reframe, “They are delicious,” and collecting charitable donations by requesting “money some” rather than “some money”
when the reframe is “It could save a life.” The effect is also not due to the experimenters’ appearing more deserving or likeable because of the disruption, as in a “pratfall effect” (Aronson, Willerman, & Floyd, 1966). Videotapes of experimenters showed that the disruption had no significant effect on any judg-ment about or evaluation of the experijudg-menter.
Our current work tries to tease apart the process at work to make these disruptions such powerful catapults for the reframing message. Erickson (1964) believed that his confusion techniques operated by interfering specifically with resistance. Erickson’s explanation is reminiscent of Gilbert’s (1991) two-stage model of judgment.
Gilbert (1991) described what he calls a “Spinozan” two-stage process of understanding a situation or communication. The first stage, which is compre-hension of the situation, is only affirmative. It requires acceptance of the prem-ise. To constitute and code a situation or experience, one first has to comprehend it uncritically, at face value, as if it were true. So, even an absurd statement like
“My dog is a Buddhist” cannot be understood except as a truth. Once the man-ifest meaning of the utterance or situation has been comprehended, the experi-ence becomes available for evaluation and consideration in a second evaluation
stage. Stage two is where the experience is evaluated for internal and external coherence, compared to other facts and knowledge. The evaluative stage is where augmenting and discounting occur in attributions, where counterarguing is initiated. Grice (1975) made a similar point about language comprehension involving an appreciation of the literal meaning of an utterance, followed by an evaluation of the implication of the utterance. Grice argued that because it is impossible for a dog to be a Buddhist in the literal sense, we would search the statement more deeply for some metaphorical or ironic meaning.
In Gilbert’s (1991) Spinozan theory, the two stages also differ in how easily they occur. The comprehension stage occurs automatically as an inherent part of meaning acquisition. It can’t be avoided. The evaluation stage is under more cog-nitive and motivational control, and it requires more mental effort to accomplish.
Because of this effort differential, a cognitive load, a distraction, or a lack of vo-lition will interfere with the second stage, but not the first. A disruption of the sec-ond stage would leave intact the uncritical acceptance of the situation or utterance from the first stage. Thus, Gilbert’s (1991) theory implies that a message disrup-tion that occupies attendisrup-tion and interferes with evaluadisrup-tion would promote an un-critical acceptance of the message.
One of our recent studies began to assess this process (Linn & Knowles, 2002a). We showed people a very short, 30-second, home-made commercial for Tom’s of Maine toothpaste. We chose Tom’s toothpaste because it was com-mercially available but not widely known among our participants. (We appre-ciate the support and assistance that Tom’s of Maine gave us in this project).
Half the people saw an advertisement that ended with a statement that Tom’s toothpaste was as effective as other toothpastes in fighting cavities. The other half heard the same thing about Tom’s “mouthpaste.” We selected “mouthpaste”
as a disruptive, novel, and unexpected statement. Our purpose was to see whether the disruptive statement would create a general arousal or attentiveness to the message, or if it would take attention away from the message. Participants were asked to watch the commercial, but also to watch for a flash of yellow light. They were told to press a key as soon as they detected a flash. For half the participants the flash occurred early in the commercial; for the other half it occurred near the end of the commercial, immediately after the word “mouth-paste” or “toothpaste.” Participants took longer to push the button after the disruptive word (1059 msec) than after the normal word (896 msec). It seems that a small disruption draws some attention away from the message. Our current research continues to investigate the role that Gilbert’s (1991) Spinozan process plays in producing these subtle disruption effects.