The Good Cop, Bad Cop Technique

Perhaps my last post on assholes and policing got me thinking about the word cop, but in any case, I don't think I've talked much about a stream of research that I did years ago -- about 20 -- with my colleague Anat Rafaeli on "the expression of emotion in organizational life."  We studied various settings in which people were expected to express certain emotions and suppress others, or used emotions strategically as part of their jobs.  We studied occupations including grocery store clerks, telephone bill collectors, and cops.  In particular, Anat and I published a paper that combined qualitative data that she collected on Israeli police interrogators (to be clear, these were Israeli cops trying to get confessions from Israeli citizens, as we wanted to avoid the entire Arab/Israeli and terrorist thing) and data that I gathered during a three-month ethnography of U.S. telephone bill collectors who collected overdue Visa and MasterCard payments for a large bank.

Our research, building on prior work on influence (especially Robert Cialdini's masterpiece), suggested that the reason that encountering both a nice and a nasty person was more effective than just a nice person or a nasty person was because of the "psychological contrast effect." In essence, the impact is to make the "carrots" offered by the good cop seem even sweeter and the "sticks" offered by the bad cop even harsher.  Both the cops and the bill collectors used this method routinely, although as the cops worked mostly face-to-face and the bill collectors did this over the phone, there were different variations used, and of course different stakes.  But the contrast effect seemed to be evident in both settings. For example, Anat's fieldnotes of an interrogation she observed indicated:

There were two interrogators in the room. There was an extreme difference in their style. One (the manager) was a real source of stress to the suspect, while the other was much less threatening, even friendly. The second one was also physically less threatening. He was slim, less muscular, more dressed up, and more delicate in his appearance. During the interrogation he also drifted along with the suspect, while the other used a much harsher tone.

It also seemed to be effective.  For example, one "good cop" bill collector told me how when his friendly style isn't working, he sometimes has a "bad cop" co-worker do the call:

Then, usually, they pay pretty quick. Especially if it is Tom who does it. He has had a couple of managers tell him to cool down, where he has just pissed this person off and this person hangs up in a huff. But the next thing you know they're on the phone to the nice collector going, "What do you want, what do you want? Don't you ever have him call, I don't ever want to talk to him again, he was so rude."

We also identified some interesting variations of the good cop. bad cop method. Looking back, they sound to me like we could have used simpler language, but I was a young academic then, and was probably rewarded by the peer review process for doing so... and wasn't quite at the career stage where I was concerned about writing for human-beings.  The variants include:

1. Sequential good cop, bad cop: This is the classic approach, as we saw with the above bill collector, where you start with the good cop and go back and forth between encounters with the two until your "target" complies -- in this case wither paying the bill or confessing to the crime. Just like in the movies, the targets usually caved-in to the good cop, sometimes saying things like " I never want to see that guy again." 

2. Simultaneous good cop, bad cop. That was they both work on you at once. The bill collectors didnt use this method, but the police did -- and would argue openly with each other to strike fear in the heart of the suspect (Anat has notes of a bad cop saying "He looks like dirt to me" and the good cop saying "He looks like a good guy to me."

3. One person plays both bad and good cop.  The idea here is to create contrast, as one interrogator explained "I speak in a very low, relaxed tone. So that way, when I yell, it really makes them jump."

4. Good cop in contrast to hypothetical bad cop. The bill collectors used this a lot, they would be customer service oriented but warn that if the debtor didn't pay now, they would be turned over to a collection agency, where not only would the people be nastier, they would be taking more aggressive action to take away their house or car.  

Please note I am not endorsing these methods, especially by the police, but the fact is that good cop, bad cop is an effective tool for compliance because using it -- often in very subtle ways -- does apparently enhance the impact both the carrots and the sticks. In fact, this qualitative study is bolstered by experiments on negotiation teams by researchers Susan Brodt and Marla Tuchinsky  showing that -- under most situations -- having both a good cop and a bad cop on a negotiation team is a winning strategy.

BUT there was also a twist we did not address in our research, and in fact, would have been tough to do as we were studying people in "the wilds" of organizational life.  Their research shows that starting with a good cop and then using a bad cop was not effective, that the method only was effective for negotiating teams when the bad cop went first and the good cop followed.   So, this may mean it really should be called "The Bad Cop, Good Cop Technique."   In thinking about this finding, and looking at our old data, I notice that -- in just about all the cases we looked at -- although the cops or bill collectors started out nice at times, they would switch back and forth between good and bad cop, so there would be many times when the good cop followed a bad cop -- as the example of the nice and nasty bill collector above shows.  One exception is the "hypothetical" bad cop technique, where the good cop warns that if you don't pay now, things are going to get a lot nastier -- which in the case of debts, everyone knows is not a hollow threat.

As I wrote in The No Asshole Rule, although I generally am opposed to workplace assholes, there are times when they do seem to be effective -- after all, fear and intimidation do change human behavior, despite the dangerous side-effects.  The implication of this theory and research is if you are an asshole, and want to be a more effective one, you would be wise to team-up with a good cop.  This isbecause doing so will make your nastiness sting even more and because good cops also often play the role of toxic handler, cleaning up the mess that asshole bosses and other nasty people leave behind.

I wonder, do other people use variations of good cop, bad cop? Or have you had it used on you?

Here are the citations to the articles:

Brodt, S.E. and Tuchinsky, M. (2000) Working together but in opposition: An examination of the “good cop/bad cop” negotiating team tactic. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 81, 155-177.

Rafaeli, A., and Sutton, R., (1991). Emotional contrast strategies as means of social influence: Lessons
from criminal interrogators and bill collectors. Academy of Management Journal, 34, 749–775.

Comments

[Alek Remash]

One of Bob's colleagues at Stanford effectively utilizes #3 to motivate students, doling out more high praise and stinging criticism than in all the other classrooms I've been in--combined. This energetic professor frequently swung back and forth between complimenting and degrading students, both in and out of class. We responded well for the most part because we could tell he was genuinely passionate about the work and really wanted to push us to do our best. And he was openly critical of himself and has a great sense of humor. It was not the most comfortable learning environment, but it was one of the most rewarding. I'm glad I experienced it (for multiple reasons), but I am also relieved that I don't have to deal with it regularly in other parts of my life.

[Alek Remash]

My wife and I use this approach on contractors that we've hired for home improvements or events management. She'll complain loudly about what they're doing wrong, threaten to complain to their boss or a post negative review online, and storm off. That sometimes scares them straight, but if it seems to annoy them, I step in to prevent them from retaliating by sabotaging, vandalizing, etc. I'll quietly offer to go stop her if they promise to fix the problem, and maybe slip them a tip on the way out if they do better from then on, and (this is where the acting starts) plead if they could just make my wife happy because I have to live with her after they leave. That usually produces an affirmative smile, but then I warn them that if they don't improve, she'll fire and not pay them, and file complaints with BBB or whomever and get her lawyer cousin involved "like she did with those guys we hired last year." So it's a sequential combination of #1 and #4: bad cop with a small stick, good cop with a small carrot, threat of bad cop returning with a big stick.

[Randy]

Bob,
Is your masthead photograph a "good cop, bad cop" scene?

[Kevin Rutkowski]

This got me thinking about how the US could use this on the world stage. I think that regardless of what anyone thinks about our recent presidents, most would agree that the world sees Clinton and Obama as "good cops" and Bush as a "bad cop".

Obama should use that to his advantange and explain to any enemies that they should cooperate with him or the American people are likely to elect "bad cop" Dick Cheney to deal with them next! That should scare 'em into compliance. :-)

[Kevin Rutkowski]

Every time I've purchased a car, the dealer who I speak with was the good cop, but his manager in the back office was the bad cop.

The dealer always wanted to give me everything I asked for, but the mean manager in back just wouldn't let him.

[twitter.com/scyphers]

As a manager, I've done the good cop, bad cop approach (on both sides). I've also ended taking the bad cop, worse cop tack -- not quite as succesful, that one. Works wonders for putting the fear of god into someone, but has quickly diminishing returns.

[cultureguru]

Ooh, if could sign this anonymously.

You just explained our parenting style, added at least another 10 years to our already 22 year old marriage, and have removed my final resistance to going into business with my husband.

So the next time I have the urge to say to him "your an a..hole" I'll follow it up with, "and I mean that as a comliment."

Thanks for the insight!

[Dwayne Phillips]

For 20-something years I was an engineer in the Federal government. We would visit companies that were making systems for us. Many in my office advocated the good cop, bad cop approach. "You act ugly and I'll act nice, that'll shake 'em up."

Several problems:

(1) We weren't good actors. Any moron could see through the ploy.

(2) This ploy caused us to lie. Once you lie, you are a liar and no one should ever trust you.

(3) All the ploys in the world didn't make the electrons flow through the circuits the way we wanted them to. Only good designs would do that. The ploy didn't make the designers any smarter.

(4) It was just plain stupid.

[Aaron Windeler]

Bob,

#3 reminds me of the game-theory idea that sometimes it is best for your opponent to think that you are crazy (some people say that this is what Nixon was doing to get the USSR to think that the United States had a crazy person in charge of all the nukes, so they better be very careful).

Also, the classic parental line, "Wait until your father gets home." seems like a case of the good cop, bad cop.