What is this magic word?

You will be surprised to know that there is one particular word which can be used to easily persuade others in complying with your request. What is this magic word? Because.

Indeed, research on the psychology of influence has revealed the strong persuasive power of the word ‘because’. Perhaps the most famous experiment that demonstrated this is the one conducted by social psychologist Ellen Langer and her colleagues (Langer, Blank & Chanowitz, 1987).

We all know that if we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. Langer and her colleagues set out to demonstrate this in her experiment. They asked people waiting in line to use a library copying machine if they can get ahead in line.

The first request given was “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”. The effectiveness of this request coupled with a reason was almost completely successful: 94% of those asked complied to the request.

However, when in a second variation she made the request only: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” In response to this question, only 60% of those asked complied. At first thought, it looked as if the addition of the words because I’m in a rush – that is a reason presented – was what made the difference between the two requests.

However, a third variation of the request was made by the experimenters that showed that this was not so. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word because and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed even though no real reason, no new information was added to justify their compliance. 

It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, because, that made the difference.

The results of this experiment show that People simply like to have reasons for what they do (Bastardi & Shaffi, 2000). Moreover, they show that we are desperate to understand why things happen and to make sense of whatever reason we are given, even when there is no reason worth making sense of.