Once my friend came up to me and asked to lend her some of my notes on our Psychology class. The reason for that request was her failing the exam, thus she had to study for it then more persistent. Naturally, I could not refuse her. In addition, the request seemed rather small. Therefore, I even did not think much and without hesitations gave her the notes, which she asked. However, two days later, my friend came again and this time she was asking to lend her all my notes. Frankly speaking, I needed them too, but despite that, I lent her what she was asking. When the understanding of what I have done came to me, I started reflecting on the reasons of my actions. After a few hours of careful thinking, I recalled the notion of compliance techniques that we had studied recently. Only then, I came to understanding: she simply tricked me with the compliance technique called the foot-in-the-door.
The foot-in-the-door technique is based on two requests, which are interrelated, but have different value and relevance and must always address the same person (Zalewski, 2010, p.63). The foot-in-the-door technique relies on the assumption, that “once a person has been induced to comply with a small request, he is more likely to comply with a larger demand” (Freedman & Fraser, 1966, p.195).
The effectiveness of the foot-in-the-door technique is resulted in the people’s use of their behavior. In this technique, people who are tricked have positive attitudes, because there is minimum external pressure on them (Sternthal, Scott, & Dholakia, 1976, n.p.).
Nail Pate states that foot-in-the-door technique always works. At least, it works in almost every experiment (2014, n.p.). The first step of this technique is to make any small request. The second step is to make another request that is a larger one. Following these two simple steps, you are more likely to get what you want.
References
Freedman, J. & Fraser, S. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195-202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0023552
Patel, N. (2014). Foot-in-the-door technique: How to get people to seamlessly take action. Forbes.
Sternthal, B., Scott, C., & Dholakia, R. (1976). Self-perception as a means of personal influence: The foot-in-the-door technique. Advances in Consumer Research, 3, 387-393.
Zalewski, B. (2010). Positioning and the ‘Foot- in- the- Door’ social influence technique. International Journal for Dialogical Science, 4(2), 61-73.
