PsychologicalDUAL-USE

Generation Effect

What it is

Information a person produces for themselves is remembered better, and believed more, than the same information handed to them — so the most durable persuasion gets the target to supply the argument.

How it works

Slamecka and Graf showed in 1978 that people who generated a word from a cue and a rule (rapid – f___) remembered it better than people who simply read the pair, across recognition and recall and across several kinds of rule. Bertsch and colleagues' 2007 meta-analysis of 86 studies put the advantage at roughly four tenths of a standard deviation, larger at longer delays. The likely reasons are that generating forces deeper processing of the item and its link to the cue, and that self-produced material is tagged as one's own. Persuasion research had found the attitudinal counterpart earlier: Janis and King reported in 1954 that people who improvised a speech for a position shifted toward it more than people who listened to the same arguments, and Aronson's work on self-persuasion rests on the same point. An argument you built meets no counter-arguing, because there is no outside source to resist. Teachers and clinicians use this openly. It becomes a tactic when the questions are arranged so that only one answer can be generated.

Real-world examples

  • •Retrieval practice and fill-in-the-blank study methods outperform re-reading for the same reason: the learner generates the answer instead of receiving it.
  • •Motivational interviewing, as set out by Miller and Rollnick, has the clinician elicit the client's own reasons for change rather than supply them, because self-voiced reasons predict behaviour better than advice.
  • •Testimonial contests of the “tell us in 25 words why you love our product” type, which Cialdini describes, get thousands of customers to write the advertiser's argument in their own words.
  • •Sales scripts ask “what would it mean for your family if this were solved?” so that the prospect states the benefit; the prospect later remembers the benefit as their own conclusion.
  • •“Do your own research” communities, from alternative-health forums to political conspiracy boards, supply curated fragments and let members assemble the conclusion, which is then held with the confidence of a personal discovery.

Ethical guidelines

Where the line is

Eliciting a person's own reasons with open questions and full information, as a teacher or clinician does, respects their judgment; arranging the questions or the materials so that only your conclusion can be generated, and letting them mistake it for their own discovery, is manipulation.

  • ●Ask open questions whose answers you do not control; if every path through your questions ends at the same conclusion, you are dictating it and hiding the dictation.
  • ●When you elicit someone's reasons, give them the full picture first, including the reasons against.
  • ●Do not harvest self-generated statements — testimonials, pledges, written reasons — under one pretext in order to use them as commitment devices later.

How to defend against it

  • ►When you notice you are being asked to list reasons for something, generate the reasons against with equal effort before you answer — the “consider the opposite” procedure of Lord, Lepper and Preston.
  • ►Ask who chose the questions. A conclusion you reached by answering someone else's sequence of questions is partly theirs.
  • ►Be wary of the feeling of having worked it out yourself; check what materials you were given to work with, and what was left out of them.
  • ►In a sales conversation, name the tactic out loud — “you're asking me to make your pitch for you” — and return to price, terms and alternatives.
  • ►Use the effect for yourself: before a high-stakes decision, write your own criteria in advance, so that the reasons you generate are anchored to your goals and not to the seller's prompts.

References

  1. Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6), 592-604
    The founding experiments: generated words are remembered better than read words.
  2. Bertsch, S., Pesta, B. J., Wiscott, R., & McDaniel, M. A. (2007). The generation effect: A meta-analytic review. Memory & Cognition, 35(2), 201-210
    Meta-analysis of 86 studies finding a reliable generation advantage of about 0.40 standard deviations.
  3. Janis, I. L., & King, B. T. (1954). The influence of role playing on opinion change. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49(2), 211-218
    People who improvised arguments for a position shifted toward it more than passive listeners.
  4. Aronson, E. (1999). The power of self-persuasion. American Psychologist, 54(11), 875-884
    Self-generated persuasion is more durable than persuasion from an external source.
  5. Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press
    The clinical practice of eliciting the client's own reasons for change.
  6. Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (rev. ed.). Harper Business
    Testimonial contests and written statements as commitment devices.
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