Explain how compliance techniques such as the foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face change behaviour, evaluate the research behind them, and apply them to unfamiliar situations in the four contexts.
Each is in the Psychology glossary, with every other term in the subject.
The principle that once people have committed themselves to a position or action, especially publicly, they feel pressure to behave consistently with that commitment.
A change in behaviour in response to a direct request from another person who has no authority to give orders, often without any change in private attitudes.
A deliberate method of making a request that increases the chance that the person asked will agree, such as the foot-in-the-door or door-in-the-face technique.
A compliance technique in which a large request that is likely to be refused is followed by a smaller request, which is then more likely to be accepted as a concession.
A compliance technique in which a person is first asked to agree to a small request, which makes them more likely to agree to a larger, related request later.
A compliance technique in which a person agrees to a request at a low cost, and the cost is then raised; many still comply because they feel committed to their earlier decision.
A person’s understanding of how others try to influence them, which can make compliance techniques less effective once the person recognises that a technique is being used.
Describe compliance and explain how it differs from conformity and obedience.
Explain Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion, with an example of each.
Describe the foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, low-ball and that’s-not-all techniques and explain why each works.
Explain the conditions under which compliance techniques succeed or fail, including reactance and persuasion knowledge.
Describe and evaluate the study by Freedman and Fraser (1966).
Discuss cultural differences in how compliance techniques work.
Evaluate research on compliance techniques with reference to measurement, causality, bias and responsibility.
Apply one or more compliance techniques to change behaviour in an unfamiliar situation.
Compliance is a change in behaviour in response to a direct request. Compliance techniques are ways of making a request that raise the chance that a person will say yes, and they are used every day by salespeople, charities, health campaigns, teachers and friends.
Compliance belongs to the sociocultural approach because it is a form of social influence: it happens between people and depends on shared social rules, such as the rule that a favour should be returned. Research on compliance has a strong link to the concept of change, since its techniques are designed to change behaviour, and to responsibility, since the same techniques can be used to help or to manipulate.
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Cialdini’s six general rules that make people more likely to agree to requests: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity.
An unpleasant motivational state that arises when a person feels their freedom to choose is threatened, leading them to resist the pressure or do the opposite of what is asked.
The social norm that people should repay what others give them, so that receiving a favour or a concession creates a sense of obligation to return it.
The principle that people decide what is correct or appropriate in a situation by looking at what similar others do, especially when they are uncertain.
A compliance technique in which an offer is improved, by adding extras or lowering the price, before the person has had a chance to respond to the original offer.
Compliance happens when a person agrees to do something because someone asked them to, even though the person asking has no power to give orders. The request may be spoken (a stranger asking for a signature on a petition) or implied (a free sample offered in a shop). The key feature is that the person could refuse without any formal penalty.
Compliance is one of three main forms of social influence. In conformity there is no request at all, only the example of a group. In obedience there is an order from someone with authority. In compliance there is a request between people who are, formally, equals.
Form of social influence | What produces the change | Example |
|---|---|---|
Compliance | A direct request from someone with no authority | Buying a raffle ticket when a stranger asks |
Conformity | The behaviour of a group, with no request | Standing up when everyone else in the audience stands |
Obedience | An order from an authority figure | Showing a passport when a border officer demands it |
A compliance technique is a planned way of making the request. Techniques work because they set off automatic social rules that usually help people make quick, sensible decisions, such as “return favours” or “be consistent”. Because people respond to these rules quickly and with little thought, a technique can produce agreement that the person would not give after careful reflection.
Robert Cialdini spent several years observing and training with salespeople, fundraisers and advertisers, then tested what he saw in experiments. In his book Influence (1984) he proposed that almost all compliance techniques rely on a small number of general principles of persuasion. Each principle is a social rule or shortcut that is usually useful, which is why it is so effective when someone exploits it.
The principles link compliance to dual processing theory. When people are busy, tired or uncertain, they respond to a request using fast, automatic thinking (System 1) and rely on cues such as “this person gave me something” or “everyone else is doing it”. Careful, slow thinking (System 2) makes people less likely to comply automatically, which is one reason why techniques work best on quick decisions.
Reciprocity is the social norm that people should repay what others give them. It is found in every known human society, and it makes cooperation possible because people can give without fear of being exploited. A free gift, a favour or even a concession creates a feeling of obligation that is reduced by giving something back.
Regan (1971) tested this in the laboratory. Participants worked on a task alongside a confederate, who in one condition left during a break and came back with two bottles of Coca-Cola, one of which he gave to the participant. Later the confederate asked the participant to buy raffle tickets. Participants who had received the unrequested drink bought more tickets than those who had not, and the effect occurred whether or not they liked the confederate.
People want to be, and to appear, consistent with what they have already said and done, a principle Cialdini called commitment and consistency. Once a person has made a commitment, especially a public, active or effortful one, later requests that fit the commitment are easier to agree to. This principle links compliance to cognitive dissonance, because acting inconsistently with a commitment produces dissonance.
In uncertain situations, people decide what is correct by looking at what others do. Milgram, Bickman and Berkowitz (1969) placed groups of confederates on a busy New York street, all looking up at a building window. The larger the group looking up, the larger the proportion of passers-by who also looked up. Social proof is strongest when the others are similar to the person and the situation is unclear.
Social proof overlaps with informational social influence in conformity research. The difference lies in how it is used: in compliance, information about others (“most people in this street have already donated”) is added to a request in order to increase agreement.
People agree more readily to requests from people they like, and liking is increased by similarity, compliments, attractiveness and cooperation. Burger et al. (2004) found that university students who believed they shared a birthday, a first name or a similar fingerprint pattern with a requester were more likely to agree to the requester’s request for a favour than students who noticed no similarity. The effect disappeared when the shared feature was described as common, which suggests that a similarity has to feel personal to increase liking.
People are more likely to comply with requests from those who appear to be experts or to hold legitimate power. Signs of authority, such as titles, uniforms and confident manner, work even when the person has no real power over the target. In a field experiment by Bickman (1974), passers-by in New York were more likely to follow a stranger’s instructions, such as picking up a paper bag, when he was dressed as a security guard than when he wore ordinary clothes. Requests from authority figures lie close to obedience, which is studied as a separate topic.
Opportunities seem more valuable when they are rare or about to disappear. In a study by Worchel, Lee and Adewole (1975), participants rated cookies as more desirable when they came from a jar holding only two cookies than from a jar holding ten. “Limited edition”, “only three left in stock” and “offer ends tonight” all use scarcity. Part of its effect comes from people’s dislike of losing the freedom to choose.
YouTubeThe best-researched compliance techniques make two requests in sequence. The first request is not the one the requester really cares about. It prepares the ground, by creating a commitment, a concession or a contrast, so that the second, target request is more likely to be accepted. Each technique relies mainly on one or two of Cialdini’s principles.
In the foot-in-the-door technique, the requester first asks for something so small that almost everyone agrees, such as answering two questions or signing a petition. Later, they ask for something much larger. People who agreed to the small request are more likely to agree to the large one than people who are asked only the large request.
The classic demonstration is the study by Freedman and Fraser (1966), in which agreeing to display a small safe-driving sign made householders far more willing, two weeks later, to let a large and ugly sign be placed on their lawn.
Freedman and Fraser explained the effect with self-perception theory. After agreeing to the first request, people observe their own behaviour and conclude that they are “the kind of person who helps with causes like this”. The second request then fits this new self-image. A second explanation is consistency: having agreed once, refusing a related request would feel inconsistent. Both explanations predict that the technique works best when the first request is freely chosen and actually carried out, and that it fails when people are paid for the first request, because the payment, rather than their own character, then explains why they agreed.
Burger (1999) reviewed several decades of research and concluded that the foot-in-the-door effect is real but usually modest, and that several processes contribute to it: self-perception, consistency, commitment and a sense of what others expect. The effect is larger when the first request requires some effort, when it is for a good cause, and when the person is told that they have been helpful.
The door-in-the-face technique reverses the order. The requester first asks for something so large that it is almost certain to be refused. Immediately afterwards, the same person asks for something smaller, which was the real target all along. The smaller request is accepted more often than if it had been made on its own.
Cialdini et al. (1975) approached university students on campus. In the door-in-the-face condition, students were first asked to work as unpaid counsellors at a juvenile detention centre for two hours a week for at least two years; all refused. They were then asked to take a group of young offenders on a two-hour trip to the zoo. Half of them (50%) agreed, compared with 17% of students asked only about the zoo trip. In a third condition, students heard both requests described and were asked to choose one, and 25% agreed to the zoo trip, which shows that the effect was not simply a matter of contrast.
Cialdini proposed the reciprocal concessions explanation. When the requester retreats from the large request to a smaller one, this looks like a concession, and the norm of reciprocity creates pressure to make a concession in return by agreeing. This explains why the technique works only when the same person makes both requests and when the second request follows soon after the first. Two further processes may add to the effect: perceptual contrast, by which the second request looks smaller next to the first, and guilt at having refused, which agreeing to the second request relieves.
The technique has been tested with real behaviour. Cialdini and Ascani (1976) used it to ask students to give blood: a first request to become a regular donor for several years, followed by a request for a single donation, increased agreement to donate.
In the low-ball technique, a person is first persuaded to agree to an offer that looks attractive. After they have agreed, the terms become less favourable: the price rises, a hidden cost appears, or extra effort is needed. Many people still go ahead because they feel committed to the decision they have already made. The name comes from car sales, where a low price is offered and then raised once the customer has decided to buy.
Cialdini et al. (1978) asked introductory psychology students to take part in a study on “thinking processes”. In the control condition they were told at once that the session would start at 7 a.m., and 31% agreed. In the low-ball condition students were asked first whether they would take part, and only after agreeing were they told it started at 7 a.m. and given the chance to withdraw; 56% ended up agreeing.
The difference held for real behaviour as well: 53% of the low-ball group actually turned up at 7 a.m., compared with 24% of the control group. The researchers concluded that an active, freely made decision tends to persist even when its costs rise.
In the that’s-not-all technique, the requester makes an offer and then, before the person can answer, improves it, by adding something extra or reducing the price. Television advertisements that say “But wait, there’s more!” use this technique.
Burger (1986) ran a bake sale at a university. In the that’s-not-all condition, customers who asked the price of a cupcake were told it cost 75 cents, and then, before they could reply, that two cookies came with it. In the control condition, customers were shown the cupcake and cookies together and told the price was 75 cents. Sales were 73% in the that’s-not-all condition, compared with 40% in the control condition. Burger suggested that the improvement looks like a concession that people feel obliged to return (reciprocity), and that the improved offer seems better by contrast with the first.
The chart compares three classic studies, but the numbers cannot be compared directly across techniques, because each study used a different request, setting and sample. What the studies have in common is a control condition in which the same target request was made directly, which is what allows the difference to be attributed to the technique.
Compliance techniques are not automatic. Research shows that they work under particular conditions and can backfire when those conditions are not met.
The door-in-the-face technique needs the same requester and little delay. If a different person makes the second request, or days pass between the requests, there is no concession to reciprocate and the effect disappears. The foot-in-the-door technique, by contrast, still works when a different person makes the second request after some time, because it works through the target’s self-image rather than through a relationship with the requester.
The first request must be the right size. If the first foot-in-the-door request is too trivial, it does not change self-perception; if the first door-in-the-face request is absurdly large, the requester looks unreasonable and the concession is not taken seriously.
Prosocial requests work better. Both techniques have larger effects when the request is for a good cause than when it benefits only the requester, probably because helping fits a positive self-image.
Pressure that is too obvious produces resistance. When people notice that someone is trying to control them, they may react against it.
This resistance is explained by psychological reactance, a concept proposed by Jack Brehm in 1966. When people feel that their freedom to choose is being threatened, they experience an unpleasant state that motivates them to restore that freedom, often by refusing or by doing the opposite of what was asked. Strong scarcity messages and high-pressure sales tactics can trigger reactance.
People also learn how persuasion works. Friestad and Wright (1994) proposed the persuasion knowledge model: over their lifetime, people build up knowledge about the tactics others use to influence them. Once a person recognises a tactic (“this is a sales trick”), they reinterpret the request, often become more suspicious of the requester, and are less likely to comply. Children develop this knowledge gradually, which is why advertising aimed at young children raises particular concerns.
Compliance techniques are used wherever one person or organisation wants another to act. The table gives an example of a technique or principle at work in each of the four contexts.
Context | Technique or principle | How it could change behaviour |
|---|---|---|
Health and well-being | Door-in-the-face | Asking for regular blood donation, then a single donation, increased agreement to give blood (Cialdini and Ascani 1976) |
Health and well-being | Commitment and consistency | Asking patients to write down their own appointment time, or to make a public pledge to quit smoking, uses commitment to increase follow-through |
Human relationships | Reciprocity and liking | Small favours and similarities build relationships and make later requests between friends or colleagues easier to grant |
Human development | Persuasion knowledge | Younger children recognise sales tactics less easily than adolescents, so they are more open to compliance techniques in advertising |
Learning and cognition | Foot-in-the-door and commitment | A teacher who asks students to set one small, public study goal makes larger goals easier to agree to later |
In health, compliance techniques are attractive because they are cheap and do not require people to understand complex information. A pharmacy that asks customers whether they would “like to join the many people in this area who have had their flu vaccination” combines a request with social proof. The risk is that agreement does not always become action, so the best health applications measure what people actually do, not what they say they will do.
In relationships, compliance is part of everyday negotiation. Reciprocity underlies the exchange of favours that keeps friendships and working relationships going, and the door-in-the-face pattern appears naturally in bargaining, where both sides start with large demands and make concessions. When these techniques are used to change the behaviour of whole groups, such as households, guests or communities, they become a tool for changing group behaviour, which is a major area of application in the human relationships context.
For development and learning, the important question is how children come to understand and resist influence. Young children may agree to requests or respond to advertising without recognising its persuasive purpose, while adolescents become increasingly sensitive to manipulation, and may show reactance to adults’ requests. Teachers and parents use commitment and consistency when they ask children to agree to classroom rules, because a rule a child has agreed to is easier to enforce than one imposed from outside.
Some of the social rules behind compliance appear to be universal. The norm of reciprocity has been described in every society studied, and the obligation to repay favours is part of the culture of gift exchange in many communities. Other principles vary in strength from one culture to another, because cultures differ in what makes a person feel obliged to agree.
Petrova, Cialdini and Sills (2007) compared how US-born students and Asian international students at a US university responded to a series of related requests to take part in surveys. Among US-born students, having agreed to an earlier request predicted agreeing to a later one more strongly than among Asian students, which suggests that the consistency principle has more influence in the first group. The researchers linked this to individualism and collectivism. In individualist cultures, behaving consistently with one’s own past choices is a sign of a stable personal identity, while in collectivist cultures people place more weight on what others in their group do and expect.
These findings have a practical meaning. Techniques based on personal commitment, such as the foot-in-the-door technique and the low-ball technique, may work best in individualist settings, while techniques based on social proof, such as messages about what peers or neighbours do, may be more effective in collectivist settings. Cultures with high power distance may also give more weight to authority cues.
Compliance research has some unusual strengths for social psychology, because much of it measures real behaviour in natural settings. It also has clear weaknesses, which the concepts help to organise.
Many classic compliance studies were field experiments that measured real behaviour: putting up a sign, buying cakes, turning up at 7 a.m., giving blood. This gives them high ecological validity compared with laboratory studies that measure attitudes. However, several studies operationalised compliance as agreeing to a request rather than carrying it out. In the Freedman and Fraser study, no sign was ever put up, so the study measured verbal agreement, not the costly behaviour itself. Saying yes on the doorstep and following through later are different outcomes, and the gap between them is large in some areas, such as health.
Most studies used random allocation of people, households or time slots to conditions, so a difference in compliance can reasonably be attributed to the technique. What the experiments show less clearly is the mechanism. The foot-in-the-door effect may come from self-perception, consistency or commitment; the door-in-the-face effect from reciprocal concessions, contrast or guilt. Studies that add conditions to test one explanation against another, such as the extra condition in Cialdini et al. (1975), are the strongest evidence about why techniques work.
The classic studies were carried out mainly in the United States between the 1960s and 1980s, with American students or householders. Familiarity with sales tactics, attitudes to strangers at the door and cultural ideas about consistency have changed since then and differ between cultures, which limits generalisability. Effects reported in early, striking studies are often larger than those found in later reviews: Burger (1999) found that foot-in-the-door effects across many studies were real but modest. Publication bias is a likely part of the reason, since studies that found no effect were less likely to be published.
Field experiments on compliance usually do not ask for informed consent, because people who knew they were in a study would behave differently. Participants are often deceived, for example by being asked to put up a sign that will never be installed. These studies are usually judged acceptable because the costs to participants are small, but the ethical questions remain.
A larger issue is how the techniques are used. The same principles that increase blood donation can be used to sell unnecessary products or lock people into expensive contracts. Low-ball tactics in sales are restricted by consumer protection law in many countries. Psychologists who teach or apply these techniques have a responsibility to consider whose interests they serve, and the persuasion knowledge model suggests that teaching people how techniques work is one way to protect them.
YouTubeCompliance techniques are designed to produce a single act, not a lasting change in attitudes. A person who buys a cupcake because of the that’s-not-all technique has not come to value cupcakes more. Where long-term change is the goal, as in health or environmental behaviour, compliance techniques are most useful when they lead people to commit to repeated behaviour, or when they are combined with approaches that change attitudes, such as those based on cognitive dissonance.
Concept | Strength | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
Measurement | Often real behaviour in natural settings | Often agreement rather than action; one-off measures |
Causality | Random allocation and direct-request control conditions | Mechanisms are disputed; several processes may operate together |
Bias | Effects replicated across many studies | Mostly US samples from 1960–1990; publication bias; later effects smaller |
Responsibility | Low-cost, low-harm procedures; useful for prosocial goals | No consent, deception; techniques can be used to manipulate |
Change | Can produce quick behaviour change at little cost | Usually short-term; little attitude change |
Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser aimed to find out whether persuading people to agree to a small request would increase their willingness to agree to a larger request later, without any pressure being applied, and to explore why such an effect might occur.
The researchers carried out two field experiments in Palo Alto, California. In the first, 156 housewives chosen at random from the telephone directory were phoned and asked to answer eight simple questions about the household soaps they used. Three days later they were phoned again and asked to allow a team of five or six men into their home for about two hours to list all their household products. Women who had answered the first questions were more than twice as likely to agree to the large request as women contacted only once.
The second experiment, the better-known one, tested whether the effect depended on the two requests being similar. Experimenters went from door to door, and 112 residents (105 women and 7 men) took part.
In the first contact, residents were asked either to display a small sign about 7.5 cm square or to sign a petition. The topic was either safe driving (similar to the later request) or keeping California beautiful (different from it). This gave four first-request conditions.
Two weeks later, a different experimenter visited and asked whether the residents would allow a large, poorly lettered sign saying “Drive Carefully” to be placed on their front lawn for about a week. A photograph showed that the sign would hide much of the front of the house. A control group received only the second visit.
The independent variable was whether, and in what form, a first request had been made. The dependent variable was whether the resident agreed to the large sign. No signs were actually installed.
Of the residents who had agreed to display a small safe-driving sign, 76% agreed to the large sign, compared with 17% of residents in the control group who were asked only the large request. The other three first-request conditions, including a petition about keeping California beautiful, which had nothing to do with driving or signs, also increased agreement compared with the control group, although by less.
Agreeing to a small request significantly increased the likelihood of agreeing to a much larger one, even when the second request came from a different person and two weeks later. Because the effect occurred even when the issue and task were different, Freedman and Fraser concluded that it was not explained by commitment to a particular cause or by a relationship with the requester. They proposed that agreeing to the first request changed the person’s self-perception: they came to see themselves as the kind of person who agrees to requests from strangers and acts on things they believe in.
The study measured a real decision made in people’s own homes, not a rating in a laboratory, which gives it high ecological validity. However, compliance was operationalised as saying yes to the large sign, and no sign was ever installed, so the study did not show whether people would have followed through. The self-perception explanation was also inferred from the pattern of results rather than measured, for example by asking participants how they saw themselves.
Whole blocks of houses, rather than individual residents, were assigned to conditions, so that neighbours could not compare notes. The control group received the same large request without the first contact, which supports the conclusion that the first request caused the increase. Assigning by block means that differences between neighbourhoods may have added to the differences between conditions, although the researchers chose blocks that were as similar as possible.
The comparison between similar and dissimilar first requests helped to test competing explanations, which is a strength of the design. The experiment cannot rule out every alternative: residents who agreed to the first request had also had a pleasant contact with a researcher, which may have made later contact feel more familiar.
The sample came from one affluent Californian town in the 1960s and was mostly women at home during the day. Attitudes to strangers at the door, to signs on lawns and to requests from researchers may be very different in other places and today. Later research reviewed by Burger (1999) found foot-in-the-door effects that were usually much smaller than the 76% versus 17% difference found here, so the original result may overstate the typical effect.
Residents did not know they were in a study and did not give informed consent. They were deceived about the purpose of the requests and about the sign, which would never have been installed. The harm was small, but they were not debriefed in the way a laboratory participant would be, which raises the question of whether field experiments on ordinary people’s helpfulness should be carried out without their knowledge.
Sources: Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. _Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195–202._
In Paper 1 Section B the scenario is set in one of the contexts, and the answer must apply the technique to it, not just describe the technique.
Compliance is a change in behaviour in response to a direct request from someone with no authority; it differs from conformity (no request) and obedience (an order).
Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion are reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity; they work as mental shortcuts.
The foot-in-the-door technique (small request first) works through self-perception and consistency: Freedman and Fraser (1966) found 76% agreement after a small first request versus 17%.
The door-in-the-face technique (large request refused first) works through reciprocal concessions: Cialdini et al. (1975) found 50% versus 17% agreement.
The low-ball technique raises the cost after agreement and relies on commitment; the that’s-not-all technique improves an offer before the person answers.
Techniques can fail or backfire because of psychological reactance, persuasion knowledge, a delay or a change of requester.
Consistency-based techniques may work best in individualist cultures and social proof in collectivist ones.
Research measures real behaviour in field settings, but often only agreement, with US samples from decades ago, deception without consent, and effects smaller in later reviews.
I can describe compliance and explain how it differs from conformity and obedience.
I can explain Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion with an example of each.
I can describe the foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, low-ball and that’s-not-all techniques and explain why each works.
I can explain why compliance techniques sometimes fail, including reactance and persuasion knowledge.
I can describe and evaluate Freedman and Fraser (1966).
I can discuss how culture affects which compliance techniques work.
I can evaluate compliance research with reference to measurement, causality, bias and responsibility.
I can apply a compliance technique to change behaviour in an unfamiliar scenario.