A Goal-Directed Approach to Gaining Compliance

Abstract

This research examines how particular face threats intrinsic to compliance gaining goals constrain compliance gaining behaviors, finding that (a) threats to certain negative and positive face wants differentiate compliance gaining goals from each other; (b) compliance gaining goals are distinct from each other in their arrangements of the number and kind of both appropriate and inappropriate, and efficient and inefficient, compliance gaining behaviors, particularly the goals of stopping an annoying habit, getting a date, asking a favor, and ending a relationship; and (c) a compliance gaining goal’s restriction of cointeractants’ autonomy accounts for differences in which compliance gaining behaviors are judged more and less appropriate, and which more and less efficient, for different compliance gaining goals. Although compliance gaining goals differentially threaten aspects of both negative and positive face, a goal’s autonomy restriction, although not its negative affect potential, relates systematically to the appropriateness and efficiency arrangements of compliance gaining behaviors.