“Friends, how many of us have them. . .”

“I’m talking about friends, ones we can depend on”- Will Smith

Long ago, in his “Millennium” album, Will Smith sung about friendship. He wrote about a communal relationship, a relationship described by Clark (1984) as one in which the partners respond to each other’s needs. This kind of relationship is what I would personally describe as a friendship based on agape love, described by Lee (1988) as a new secondary type of love that blends the primary love styles that include erotic love (Eros), uncommitted love (ludus) and friendship love (storge). This agape love is other oriented and more altruistic. I strive to love my friends to this degree and as a result, I feel my friendships are defined a communal relationship.

Take for example, my roommate and I. We’ve been living together for three years and at first we attempted to share equally the purchases for our apartment. As sophomores (the first year we lived together) we’d alternate weeks we’d buy bottles of water, [we’ve gone green now . . . we use a Brita filter!] cases of soda, or snacks for our apartment. As we progressed in our friendship, purchases stopped being an equal exchange as it is in an exchange relationship, based on strict reciprocity. If either of us makes a run to the grocery store or Target, we either ask, “Hey need anything” or take a look in the refrigerator, run to the grocery store and fill in each others needs. It’s nice to know that this communal relationship has lead to friendship that Will Smith talks about . . . those friends we can depend on.


oh here is a link to his song. . .its only a clip of it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0456PW85E8



Some of my friends at my 22nd birthday celebration

Clark, M.S. (1984). Record keeping in two types of relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47: 549-557

Clark, M.S., & Mills, J. (1979). Interpersonal attraction in exchange and communal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37: 12-24.

Lee, J.A. (1988). Love-styles. In R.J. Sternberg and M.L. Barnes (ed.), The psychology of love (pp 38-67). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

D:S, what a great spring break

When you drive 18 college students over 750 miles to the middle of the wilderness, you’re destined to notice multiple social theories, especially if these students are to work together for an entire week in the middle of the wilderness with no electricity (yeah, no facebook or internet and certainly no cell phone service) and no running water (no flushing toilets and no showers). Southwestern does just that with their Destination: Service opportunity during spring break. This year, I joined 17 other students and 2 faculty leaders on the 750 mile drive to Gila National Wilderness Forest near Silver City, New Mexico. We helped the national forest service restore trails and created new trails in our four days of work.

What is interesting is that this environment facilitated bonding among complete strangers. Members were cohesive, predominately because the task they had before them was meaningful and important to the individuals and we all believed that our own efforts were needed for a successful outcome. This simple matter that the task we were performing as a group was important to us as individuals and we each believed we played an important role in the success of our efforts, greatly helped decrease social loafing (Karau & Williams, 1993). Social Loafing, as described by Latane et al (1979) is a theory in which individuals, in a group setting decrease their individual contribution on easy tasks.

One commonly sees, in situations of social loafing, that one person may have a mind set that goes along the lines of, “I don’t have to work too hard because other people are working” as seen with free riders (Nijstad et al., 2003). A person may also fall to the sucker effect (Houldswroth & Matthew, 2000, Kerr, 1983; Shepperd, 1993a) in which he or she does not want to be the “sucker” who works too much, while everyone else does very little. Thankfully, because of our cohesiveness, Gilans (as we now proudly call ourselves) did not fall prey to social loafing. In turn, I feel like many of us engaged in social compensation (Karau & Williams, 2001); we, as individuals, each increased our own efforts on our group tasks to compensate for others who were going to socially loaf. As a result of our group’s social compensation, we did in a day and a half, what the forest rangers expected us to do in an entire week of work.



Will helping me cross the river (This is after Zach and I had rescued Caroline from falling. . .and being taken away by the Gila RIver)



Gilans on Destination: Service 2010!!!


Houldswroth, C., & Matthews, B.P. (2000). Group composition, performance and educational attainment. Education and Training, 42, 40-53.

Karau, S. J., & Williams, K.D. (1993). Social loafing: a metaanalytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65: 681-706.

Karau, S.J., & Willimas, K.D. (2001). Understanding individual motivation in groups: The collective effort model. In M.E. Turner (ed.) Groups at work: Theory and research. Applied social research (pp. 113-141). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kerr, N.L. (1983). Motivation losses in small groups: A social dilemma analysis. Journal of Personality and Socialy Psychology, 45, 819-828.

Latane, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979).Many hands makelight the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 822-832.

Nijstad, B.A., Diehl,M., & Stroebe, W. (2003). Cognitive stimulation and interferente in idea-generating groups. In P.B. Paulus & B.A. Nijstad (Eds.) Group creativity: Innovation through collaboration (pp. 137-159). New York: Oxford University Press.

Shepperd, J.A. (1993a). Productivity loss in performance groups. A motivation analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 67-81.

DAC Blog: My roommate, the servant

Please watch the following video. Once you have viewed the video, feel free to continue on this page and read complimentary information.





What you’ve just seen is a wonderful roommate who complies with my request. She is also a roommate who has fallen victim to compliance techniques. Compliance is a moderately explicit influence concept that occurs when someone of equal or lower status yields to a direct request. In this case, my roommate, my equal, has fallen prey to the two-step compliance technique known as door-in-the-face. Cialdini (2007) describes this technique as a simple technique, with major effectiveness (Cialdini et al, 1975).

An individual (in this case, me) makes a first request that he or she expects to be rejected. This initial request is a big, almost unreasonable request that is followed by a second request that is much smaller and more reasonable. In this case, I asked my roommate to go to my car, she quickly (and sounding rather annoyed, because I am just sitting on the couch) responds with a short and stern, “No.” When I then ask her to get me a glass of water, she responds (in what sounds like a forced) “yeah.” As you saw in the video above, she not only agreed, she also complied with my request. Affirming further the work of Cialdini &Ascani (1976) that states that the door-in-the face techniques does not elicit only empty promises. (I enjoyed my glass of water, it was refreshing after laughing hysterically at my roommate, the servant as she put it.)

I asked my roommate (once my laughter had ceased) why she had agreed to my request. She reasoned that I have given her a glass of water before and that she also goes out of her way to get me a glass a water whenever I thirst; an example of the norm of reciprocity, a norm by which we treat others how they have treated us as stated by Goulder (1960). I then explained to her what I had done (for the sake of this blog-I would never use such techniques to trick my roomie [hehe] ;-) and why, according to Cialdini et al. (1975) she had agreed and complied.

According to Cialdini and others (1975) two possibilities for the effectiveness of the door-in-the-face exists. Their work states that the concept of reciprocal concessions, a notion similar to the norm of reciprocity mentioned above, explains the compliance to the second request. The technique creates pressure to change a response in the negotiation. I, in this case, have lowered my request and my roommate, as a result, feels pressured to concede to my smaller request. Furthermore, perceptual contrast also helps explain compliance as a result of this technique; to my roommate, my first request seemed very large initially and in comparison, my second request seemed smaller and more doable. I also believe that emotions came into play to this compliance. My roommate, like others was seeking to reduce her feelings of guilt elicited by rejecting my first request (O’Keefe & Figge, 1997; Millar, 2002).



My Roomie and I at ACL 2009

Cialdini, R.B. (2007) Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York: HarperCollins

Cialdini, R.B. & Ascani, K. (1976) Test of a concession procedure for inducing verbal, behavioral, and further compliance with a request to give blood. Journal of Applied Psychology, 61, 295-300.
Cialdini, R.B., Vincent, J.E., Lewis, S.K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B.L. (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 206-215.

Goulder, A.W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25, 161-178.

Millar, M. (2002). Effects of guilt induction and guilt reduction on door in the face. Communication Research, 29, 666-680.

O’Keefe, D.J., & Figge, M. (1997). A guilt-based explanation of the door-in-the-face influence strategy. Human Communication Research, 42, 64-81.