The Power of Listening in Helping People Change

This research tests a novel source of resistance to social influence—the automatic repetition of habit. In three experiments, participants with strong habits failed to align their behavior with others. Specifically, participants with strong habits to drink water in a dining hall or snack while working did not mimic others’ drinking or eating, whereas those with weak habits conformed. Similarly, participants with strong habits did not shift expectations that they would act in line with descriptive norms, whereas those with weak habits reported more normative behavioral expectations. This habit resistance was not due to a failure to perceive influence: Both strong and weak habit participants’ recalled others’ behavior accurately, and it was readily accessible. Furthermore, strong habit participants shifted their normative beliefs but not behavior in line with descriptive norms. Thus, habits create behavioral resistance despite people’s recognition and acceptance of social influence.

Can perceived responsiveness, the extent to which an individual feels understood, validated, and cared for by close others, reduce prejudiced attitudes? We hypothesized that perceived responsiveness by meaningful other people would increase recipients’ intellectual humility and attitude ambivalence and that these changes would reduce prejudice. Five studies (total N = 3362), four of which were preregistered, manipulated perceived responsiveness by a specific person (Studies 1–3, 5) or measured the effects of perceived responsiveness by the closest social network of the recipient (Study 4). All studies supported the hypotheses. Specifically, Studies 1 and 2 found that perceived responsiveness increased intellectual humility and attitude ambivalence and reduced prejudice toward a group from a pre-determined list. Study 3 replicated these findings when participants freely chose the social group. In Study 4, perceived responsiveness from individuals’ closest social networks predicted the dependent variables a few days afterward, controlling for positive and negative affect and social desirability. Finally, in Study 5, we added a condition of positive social interaction to rule out the possibility that the prior findings were due to recalling an affectively positive experience. The effect of perceived responsiveness on prejudice reduction (i.e., increased attitude favorability toward the social group) was not moderated by attitude certainty (Study 2), anxious or avoidant attachment style (Study 2), or attitude morality (Study 3). This work suggests that fostering perceived responsiveness can serve as a strategy for mitigating prejudice and promoting more open-minded attitudes.