ABSTRACT
The objective of compliance-gaining research is to increase our understanding of how social actors use messages to achieve goals. Whereas the research area focusing on “compliance-gaining message strategy selection” has been popular in the communication discipline in the last several years, research on dyadic social influence processes has a long history in social psychology (see reviews by Seibold, Cantrill, & Meyers, 1985; Wheeless, Barraclough, & Stewart, 1983). Three decades of research, for example, have focused on ingratiation tactics (Godfrey, Jones, & Lord, 1986; Jones, 1964; Jones & Wortman, 1973), bases of power (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, Centers, & Rodrigues, 1975; Raven & Kruglanski, 1970), and influence in the organization (Kipnis, 1972, 1976; Kipnis, Castell, Gergen, & March, 1976; Kipnis & Cosentino, 1969; Kipnis & Lane, 1962; Kipnis, Schmidt, & Braxton-Brown, 1990; Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson, 1980; Schmidt & Kipnis, 1984). Our contribution to the general area of influence processes began with an interest in how people perceive common influence situations (Cody & McLaughlin, 1980, 1985a; Cody, Woelfel, & Jordan, 1983), and extended to research attempting to uncover the types of strategies people use when influencing others (Cody, 1982; Cody, Greene, Marston, Baaske, O'Hair, & Schneider, 1986; Cody, McLaughlin, & Jordan, 1980; Cody, McLaughlin, & Schneider, 1981).
