Running head UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY AND COMPLIANCE书眉独特的机会和合规.docVIP

Running head: UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY AND COMPLIANCE When Opportunity Knocks: The Effect of a Perceived Unique Opportunity on Compliance Jerry M. Burger Department of Psychology Santa Clara University David F. Caldwell Leavey School of Business Santa Clara University Thanks are extended to Jenna Abeyta, Joshua Fedder, and Corinne Kirmil for their assistance with the data collection. Correspondence can be address either to Jerry M. Burger at jburger@scu.edu or David F. Caldwell at dcaldwell@scu.edu. Abstract Four studies examined the effect of a perceived unique opportunity on compliance. In all four studies, participants who believed they had an opportunity available to few others were more likely to agree with a request than participants who believed the opportunity was widely available or participants who received no opportunity information. We attribute the effect to a widely held heuristic that one should take advantage of unique opportunities. Study results demonstrated that people respond to a perceived unique opportunity even when supplies are not limited and when the opportunity is the result of pure chance. The results of a mediation analysis supported the interpretation that the perceived uniqueness of the opportunity underlies the effect. Keywords: Compliance, opportunity, heuristics, scarcityWhen Opportunity Knocks: The Effect of a Perceived Unique Opportunity on Compliance He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed. William James When asked a simple favor, such as lending a co-worker $10 or buying a bar of chocolate for a fund-raiser, most of us respond with little or no hesitation. Rather than investing the time and effort to ponder the pluses and minuses of each option, we tend to rely on what researchers refer to as heuristic processing (Cialdini Goldstein, 2004). That is, over the course of a lifetime, we have learned various heuristics, or rules of thumb, that we apply in a near-automatic fashi