Date of Award

6-2012

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

George Bizer

Language

English

Keywords

personality, self-monitor, behavior, control, reciprocity

Abstract

I completed this experiment in order to better understand how personality moderates reciprocity. Reciprocity is a compliance strategy that involves giving or doing something for someone in exchange for something in return (Cialdini, 1993). I originally predicted that high self-monitors would show greater reciprocity than low self-monitors. Also, I predicted people with high need for cognition will show more reciprocity than people with a low need for cognition. In addition, I hypothesized that people with a low need to evaluate will show more reciprocity than people with a high need to evaluate. Participants were randomly assigned to either a “Soft Sell” Condition, in which reciprocity was not explicitly invoked, a “Hard Sell” Condition, in which reciprocity was explicitly invoked, or a control condition, in which no reciprocity was invoked. Reciprocity was measured by the amount of words that participants used to answer a mundane questionnaire. Although there were the predicted differences in reciprocity between the different personality types, these differences were not significant.

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