Foot-in-the-door technique

Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique is a compliance tactic that aims at getting a person to agree to a large request by having them agree to a modest request first. Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique is a compliance tactic that aims at getting a person to agree to a large request by having them agree to a modest request first. The principle involved is that a small agreement creates a bond between the requester and the requestee. Even though the requestee may only have agreed to a trivial request out of politeness, this forms a bond which – when the requestee attempts to justify the decision to themselves – may be mistaken for a genuine affinity with the requester, or an interest in the subject of the request. When a future request is made, the requestee will feel obliged to act consistently with the earlier one. The reversed approach – making a deliberately outlandish opening demand so that a subsequent, milder request will be accepted – is known as the door-in-the-face technique. In an early study, a team of psychologists telephoned housewives in California and asked if the women would answer a few questions about the household products they used. Three days later, the psychologists called again. This time, they asked if they could send five or six men into the house to go through cupboards and storage places as part of a 2-hour enumeration of household products. The investigators found these women were more than twice as likely to agree to the 2-hour request than a group of housewives asked only the larger request. More recently, people were asked to call for a taxi if they became alcohol-impaired. Half of the people had also been asked to sign a petition against drunk driving (which they all did) and half had not. Those who had signed the petition (complied with a small request) were significantly more likely to comply with the larger request of calling a taxi when impaired compared to those who had not been asked to sign the petition. Numerous experiments have shown that foot-in-the-door tactics work well in persuading people to comply, especially if the request is a pro-social request. Research has shown that FITD techniques work over the computer via email, in addition to face-to-face requests. The foot-in-the-door technique is also used in many commercial settings and can be illustrated using the door-to-door salesperson who eventually builds up his requests to a final purchase request. In an experiment, subjects were initially asked to have signs in their windows to promote recycling along with varying amounts of incentives ($0, $1, $3) for doing so. This study found that the FITD technique was more effective than any of the incentive strategies in producing behavioural persistence. This is supported by the self-perception theory, which states that the FITD technique is effective only because internal thoughts are what drive peoples' behaviour. That is, external pressure (such as indebtedness) for compliance is not as effective in increasing compliance. In another study, participants were given a request that included a 'but you are free' state which reminded the participant that s/he could refuse the request to participate. This condition along with the FITD technique increased the compliance of the participants. These are two extensions to the foot-in-the-door technique that help increase compliance in participants. These techniques can be used in the political, commerce and public awareness environments. For example, a study showed that having a questionnaire about organ donation increased the willingness of participants to become organ donors. It was found that increasing the number of items in the questionnaire did not necessarily affect the compliance to becoming a donor, that is, having a questionnaire alone was enough to increase the compliance. A study by Guéguen showed that the foot-in-the-door-technique is not only effective in person, but also online. In his study, he found that asking students for help saving a document as an RTF file via email increased their willingness to complete an online survey emailed to them by the initial requester. This information coupled with work by Swanson, Sherman, and Sherman, which found that students' compliance to an initial, neutral and small request not only increased their willingness to comply with a subsequent larger and anxiety-producing request, but also indicated that the anxiety-producing request was deemed less anxiety-producing than did the control group, has very large implication for possible online uses of the FITD technique. With the privacy and anonymity provided by the internet, the technique could be used online to gather information about anxiety producing incidents in a manner that would not produce as much anxiety as in-person questioning would. Further research in this domain is needed.