The study sought to assess the effects of the degree of contrast between the initial and critical requests upon the rate of compliance in the foot-in-the-door paradigm. Subjects were randomly assigned to a high-contrast, lew-contrast, or no-initial-request control condition. The critical request was presented either immediately or after an average of 8.5 days. It was found that the timing of the critical request failed to affect the rate of compliance. However, subjects in the low-contrast condition complied at a significantly higher rate than those in the high contrast condition, although neither of the experimental conditions differed significantly from the control condition. The latter finding was discussed in terms of the inhibitory role of contrast upon compliance in the foot-in-the-doorparadigm. Of the many techniques that have been shown to induce compliance , two have received more attention than the others. In both of these techniques, a moderate sized critical request with which compliance is actually desired is preceded by either a small request, in the case of the foot-in -the-door technique , or a fairly large and unreasonable request , in the case of the door-in-the face technique. The most commonly accepted explanation of the effectiveness of the foot-in-the-door technique has been Bern's (1972) self-perception theory, which states that people infer their internal states by observing their overt behavior. Thus, in the foot-in-the-door situation, subjects who comply with the small initial request come to see themselves as compliers and, therefore, would be more likely to comply with the critical request. There is some evidence in the literature , however, that strongly suggests that contrast rather than self-perception may be involved in studies using the foot-in-the-door technique. Seligman, Bush, and Kirsch (1976) and , more recently , Shanab and O'Neill (1982) found that if the initial request was very small, the foot -in-the-door technique failed to induce compliance. In the study by Seligman et al. (1976), subjects presented with an initial request that was only slightly smaller than the critical request complied with the critical request at a higher rate than those presented with initial requests that were either moderately or extremely smaller than the critical request. That is, higher rates of compliance were obtained when the amount of contrast between the two was minimal, and lower rates of compliance were obtained with greater