Engagement (social psychology)

In social Psychology, engagement indicates the whole of the consequences of an act on the behavior and the attitudes. The concept of engagement is in particular associated with work of Kiesler in the years 1960 and, more recently with those of Joule and Beauvois. Engagement can be regarded as a radical form of Dissonance cognitive.

The theory of engagement is at the base of the techniques of freely authorized tender. Several procedures can be analyzed within this framework:

the Foot-in-the-carries consists in obtaining an inexpensive behavior before requiring of a person to make quelquechose which she would have probably refused if it had been asked directly to him.
starting consists in obtaining the approval of a person before completely informing it on the costs and benefit of the act which she agreed to carry out.
the lure is an alternative of the starting in which a person commits herself carrying out an action before being informed that this one is more possible but only one alternative (more expensive or less beneficial) is available.
the carry-in-the-nose is the opposite strategy of foot-in-the-carries, but leads to the same result: this technique consists in requiring something of exorbitant of a person, whom she will refuse to make (preparatory request) for then asking him something of more accessible (final request). The fact of refusing the 1st request generally leads the person more favorably to accept the second compared to a situation where the latter is declined directly. (Example in sales engineering: false promotions.) Electronic marketing: study of the influence of the social factors on the behavior of the Net surfer.

The process of engagement can continue in gears ( escalation off commitment ) often highlighted within the framework of research on decision making in the organizations.

In all the cases, it is the situation which determines the behavior and not the attitudes or the personality of the participants in the experiment. The latter can however rationalize or justify this behavior by allotting it to their opinions or their will. The concept of engagement can thus form an explanation of the change of Attitude which takes the opposite course to the approaches of Persuasion since the attitudes become a consequence of the behavior and not the reverse.

Random links: