A Rock or a Hard Place: The Foot-in-the-Face Technique for Inducing Compliance Without Pressure1

Abstract

Situations in which the formulation of a target request is preceded by another request are a frequent field of research for social psychologists. So far, however, increased compliance with the target request has been found in conditions in which the initial request was either easier than the target request and was fulfilled (i.e., foot-in-the-door technique) or more difficult and was rejected (i.e., door-in-the-face technique). In the series of 3 field studies presented in this article, it is shown that increased compliance with the final request can also be observed when the initial request has more or less the same degree of difficulty as the final request. jasp_758 1514..1537 There are numerous situations in which people try to influence others. They may try to exert pressure directly or act without any evident pressure. Compliance without pressure is a phenomenon that has been quite intensively explored by social psychologists ever since the experiments by Freedman and Fraser (1966), who posed the hypothesis that if people agree to comply with a small request, they will be subsequently more willing to comply with a more difficult one. In one of their experiments, people who had complied with the experimenter’s request to sign a petition calling for keeping California clean or increasing road traffic safety or who had agreed to place a small sign in the front window of their homes encouraging others to behave in accordance with these appeals were then more willing to have a large, ugly billboard reading “Drive Carefully” installed in their front yards for a period of 1 week. Freedman and Fraser (1966) labeled the technique of getting a person to comply with an easy request before the target request is posed the footin-the-door technique. Although debate on the psychological mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of this technique has been going on for years, 1