Commitment: Good Intentions to Action

Imagine being asked to place a large, ugly, obtrusive billboard with the wording “DRIVE CAREFULLY” on your front lawn. When a researcher, posing as a volunteer, made precisely this request, numerous residents in a Californian neighborhood flatly declined.1 That they declined is hardly surprising, especially since they were shown a picture of the billboard almost completely obscuring the view of another house. What is surprising, however, is that fully 76% of another group of residents in …

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