Door-in-the-face technique: what it is and how it is used to persuade

The door-in-the-face technique is a widely used form of persuasion to sell; let's see why.

On more than one occasion it has happened to us that we are given a first offer, totally ridiculous and absurd, to immediately afterwards give us a more rational and attractive alternative that we are more likely to accept.

Then, coldly, we start to think about it and realize that if we had been told that second option in the first place, we would not have accepted it either. What happened? Why did we fall for it?

The door-in-the-face technique is a very common form of persuasion, so much so that we have probably used it without giving it a second thought.so much so that we have probably used it without realizing it. This technique is the bread and butter of the business world, especially in places like pawnshops. Let's find out why.

What is the door-in-the-face technique?

The door-in-the-face technique is a persuasion strategy that consists of getting someone to do us a favor or accept a demand by making two demands of them. The first demand is exaggerated, irrational and very difficult to fulfill, while the second is a little easier to satisfy. As a general rule, the person to whom we ask the favors rejects the first demand without thinking too much about it, since he sees it as something absurd, but it is quite likely that he will agree to make the second request.

The strategy behind this technique consists of having the two demands presented sequentially, not at the same time, and being clear that what we really want our interlocutor to do is the second thing we are going to ask. So, first we present the surrealistic and unlikely demand that our interlocutor is going to make, he rejects it and then, as an alternative to the first thing we have asked him, we present him with the second demand. The interlocutor will not be able to avoid comparing it with the first, seeing that it is easier and being motivated to do us the favor.

This persuasion strategy is closely related to one with a very similar name but done in reverse: the foot-in-the-door technique.. In this second case, we start by asking the person to do favors that are easy to do, that do not involve a great commitment, and gradually increase the difficulty of the demands so that the person ends up agreeing to do things that, at first, would never have occurred to him or her to commit to do.

Scientific evidence

The first time that the door-in-the-face technique was addressed experimentally was in a study conducted by Robert Cialdini in 1975.. Cialdini was a professor at Arizona State University and is known to have been one of the great researchers in the techniques of persuasion, having published in 1984 a book in which he delved into this issue, "The Psychology of Persuasion".

In his now classic experiment Cialdini asked a group of participants a very large and difficult request, which was to ask them to be mentors (companions) of prisoners for two years. This first request was usually refused, since it implied a high degree of commitment. After this first request was asked and rejected, a second request was made: to escort children to the zoo. Faced with the second option, the participants in the experiment tended to be more willing to comply with this second favor, even though it also implied a certain degree of compromise.

Example: the watch on the rake

The door-in-the-face technique is very recurrent in a myriad of situations, and it is even possible that we have used it on more than one occasion without realizing it. In fact, this strategy is the bread and butter of many antique dealers and second-hand dealers in places such as flea markets, pawn shops and the all-American garage sales.

All of these contexts have in common that prices are negotiable and both seller and buyer can play with the price. both seller and buyer can play on each other's psychology to get the maximum profit.A potential buyer approaches a flea market stall where antique watches are sold, all of them very beautiful and still working. One of them catches his eye and he asks the seller how much it costs, to which he replies that it is worth no more and no less than 500€.

The potential buyer is amazed at such an exorbitant price for a watch that, as beautiful as it is, is old, very used and does not seem to be worth that much. If it even works, it could be worth 150 or 200€ at the most. So, this buyer opts at first not to buy the watch at such a high price, i.e., he politely "slams the door in the seller's face".

However, the seller knows perfectly well that the watch is not worth 500€, but 50€50, and he also understands that the price he has given to this potential buyer is exorbitant. He was very clear that he was not going to buy it. The seller waits for the potential customer to move away a little, just enough to call him from afar and tell him that, because it is him, he is selling it to him for 100€, giving him an 80% discount.

The customer feels that you are offering him a real bargain, since he is getting a watch that was originally worth much more. The watch itself is still only really worth €50, which means that the customer is paying twice as much as he could actually pay. However, he feels that he has won, that he has convinced the seller to give him a discount, and even that the seller is doing him a favor and that he now has to repay him by buying the watch.

This is a very good example of the use of the door-in-the-face technique. The first offer was exaggerated, ridiculous, totally absurd, while the second is still also an exaggeration. and that, if it had been said at the outset that the watch was worth €100, it is quite likely that the potential buyer would not have bought it. On the other hand, by the simple fact of giving him the option of comparing prices and that the second is much lower than the first, the customer is motivated to buy it. This is how business works.

Why do we accept the second demand?

There are several explanations that have been proposed to understand why people accept a request or offer after having been presented with a first one that is much more complicated and difficult to carry out. In addition to the fact that the second option is easier than the first, there are several psychological aspects and aspects related to our social desirability that seem to increase the likelihood of accepting an option if it is given as a second offer or request.

One of the possible explanations is that, after rejecting the first offer, no matter how irrational and difficult to satisfy it is, people start to feel very guilty and bad for the simple fact of having said no. start to feel very guilty and bad about the simple fact of having said no to the offer.. This feeling of guilt could be what makes us more prone to accept the next demand, since we are afraid of feeling even worse in case we also reject it. We believe that accepting the second offer will reduce the feeling of guilt generated by rejecting the first offer.

Another explanation is the one suggested by Robert Cialdini himself. The researcher said that people interpret the lesser difficulty of the second demand or request as a sign of commitment on the part of the person asking us for a favor.. In other words, people see the fact that the person who wants us to do him a favor offers us a second option as a favor in itself. As that person does us the personal favor of renouncing his first offer to make us one that suits us better, we, moved by the rule of social reciprocity, are pushed to accept his second offer and return the favor.

Finally, another explanation that has been put forward to explain why the door-in-the-face technique works has to do with our desire to maintain a good social image, especially in front of people we care about, such as friends, family or other close and dear ones. We are concerned about what they will say about us, placing special emphasis on our actions.

If we are given an irrational and absurd first choice, which we immediately reject, we begin to believe that others may see us as bad people, selfish or incapable of committing to anything. For that reason, when we are told the second option we accept it more readily with the clear intention that any damage we may have caused to our social image be corrected or, at least, not worsen. or, at least, does not get worse. Accepting the second request we see as an opportunity to demonstrate that we are neither selfish nor bad people.

Influential factors in persuasion

Several more recent investigations have tried to see what factors may influence the effectiveness of the face-door technique, since it does not always work. Aspects such as the time it takes to make the second offer after the first or the type of relationship one has with the person making the request influences the likelihood that we will commit to making or accepting the second request.

Research conducted in 1999 by Chartrand and colleagues at Santa Clara University experimentally addressed the influence of the time delay in making the second choice. In their experiment they divided their participants into two groups. One was given the second request immediately after being told the first, while the other was given plenty of time before being told the second offer. It was found that in the group that had taken longer to give them the second option, there was greater acceptance of the second option.

One of the possible explanations for this finding is that by giving them ample time between the first and second offer the participants had time to feel bad about having rejected the first request. The more time passed, the more they thought about the fact that they had refused the first favor asked of themThe more time passes, the more they think about the fact that they refused the first favor asked of them, no matter how surreal or exaggerated it was. They may even start to think about the damage they imagine they have done to their image after that rejection, believing that people think they are bad people.

Instead, if the two offers are given too close together, people do not have time to think about how bad it was to refuse the first offer.. They do not have the possibility or time to even think that rejecting the first option is damaging to their social image, nor does it give them time to feel guilty. This means that, although they will compare the second offer with the first, they are not as likely to accept it as in the group where there is enough time to think.

Another study observed how the degree of relationship with the person asking us for a favor influences whether or not we accept it. In 2000, Murray Millar's team at the University of Nevada investigated the extent to which having a friend or family member ask us for favors increases or decreases the likelihood that we will fall for the door-in-the-face technique.

Millar saw that the closer a person was to the person being asked for favors, the more likely they were to accept the second favor if they had refused the first. On the other hand, if the person asking for favors is a total stranger, even if the second favor is less exaggerated and unreasonable than the first, there is not as much chance that we will accept it or commit to doing it as we would if asked by a loved one.

Bibliographical references:

• Cialdini, R. B., Vincent, J. E., Lewis, S. K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B. L. (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 206-215. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076284. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076284
• Chartrand, T., Pinckert, S. and Burger, J.M. (1999). When Manipulation Backfires: The Effects of Time Delay and Requester on the Foot-in-the-Door Technique. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 29(1). 211-221.
• Millar, M.G. (2000). The Effectiveness of the Door-in-the-Face Compliance Strategy on Friends and Strangers. Journal of Social Psychology. 142(3). 295-304.
• O'Keefe, D.J. and Figgé, M. (1999). Guild and expected guilt in the door-in-the-face technique. Communications Monographs. 66(4). 312-324.
• Pendleton, M.G. and Batson, C.D. (1979). Self-Presentation and the Door-in-the-Face Technique for Inducing Compliance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 5(1). 79-81.
• Psychologist World. (s.f.) The Door-in-the-Face Technique as a Compliance Strategy. Psychologist World. Extraido de https://www.psychologistworld.com/behavior/compliance/strategies/door-in-the-face-technique#references
• Genschow, O., Westfal, M., Crusius, J., Bartosch, L., Feikes, K. I., Pallasch, N., & Wozniak, M. (2020). Does social psychology persist over half a century? A direct replication of Cialdini et al.’s (1975) classic door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000261