Question

Your son asks you, can we please buy a new playstation®4 console with all of the games and the wireless controllers so that we dont have to sit near the television? no, you reply, we cant afford to buy all of that! seemingly unperturbed by your rejection, your son comes back with, then can we just buy one new game for our playstation®3? okay, i guess so, you answer, not realizing that your son has taken a social psychology class and has just used the _____________ technique to get what he wanted.

Answer 1

Door-in-the-face

       There are two relatively effective techniques to get someone to perform a favor for another. They are door-in-the-face (DITF) and foot-in-the-door techniques. Both techniques significantly increase the chance of a second request being performed. The door-in-the-face technique involves asking for a large favor that's highly likely to be declined. Then afterwards asking for a much smaller favor. In a classic DITF study, some researches took a randomly selected group of people and divided them into 3 groups. For the 1st group, the researchers first asked for volunteers to provide counseling to juvenile delinquents for 2 hours per week, for 2 years. Then after that request was declined, asked for volunteers to chaperone some juvenile delinquents for a day trip to the zoo. The 2nd group was simply asked to perform the day trip, and finally the 3rd group had counseling described to them, and was then asked to provide the chaperoning to the zoo. For the 1st group, 50% agreed to perform the day trip to the zoo, whereas only 17% of the 2nd group agreed to the trip and 25% of the 3rd group agreed.