Works
- The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action: The Role of "Placebic" Information in Interpersonal Interaction, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1978
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Giving a reason. People at a copying machine were asked to let someone go ahead of them, with no reason, with an empty reason ("because I have to make copies"), or with a real one. For a small request the empty reason worked almost as well as the real one; for a larger request it worked about as poorly as giving no reason, and only the real reason raised compliance. Caveat: Popular retellings say almost any reason works. The data do not support that for larger requests, a point made by Mark Liberman on Language Log; the study was also limited to one setting.
What it explains
Langer explains why stating the reason for a request makes it easier to grant, and why, once the request matters, the reason has to be real.