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

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

Then, cold, we start to think and we realize that, had we been told that second option in the first place, we would not have accepted it either. What happened? Why have we fallen into it?

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

• Related article: "Persuasion: definition and elements of the art of convincing"

What is the door-to-face technique?

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

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

This persuasion strategy It is closely related to one with a very similar name but that is done in reverse, the foot-in-the-door technique.. In this second case, you start by asking the person for favors that are easy to do, which do not involve a great commitment, to gradually go increasing the difficulty of the demands making the person end up agreeing to do things that, in the first place, would never have occurred to them engage.

Scientific evidence

The first time the door technique in the face was approached experimentally was in a study carried out 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 persuasion techniques, 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 request and difficult to do, which was to ask them to mentor (accompany) prisoners for two years. This first request was often rejected, since it involved a high degree of commitment. After asking them this first request and rejecting it, they were made a second one: escorting children to the zoo. With the second option, the participants of the experiment tended to agree more to fulfill this second favor, despite the fact that it also implied a certain degree of commitment.

Example: the clock on the rake

The technique of the door in the face is very recurrent in countless 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 rakes, pawn shops and the all-American garage sales.

All these contexts have in common that prices are negotiable and both seller and buyer can play with each other's psychology to get maximum profit, something that we are going to see with the following situation: A potential buyer approaches a rake stall where old watches are sold, all of them very beautiful and still working. One of them catches his eye and asks the seller how much it costs, to which he replies that it is worth neither more nor less than € 500.

The potential buyer is surprised by such an exorbitant price for a watch that, no matter how beautiful it is, is old, is very used and does not seem to be worth that much. If it even works, at most it could be worth around € 150 or € 200. Thus, this buyer opts first not to buy the watch at such a high price, that is, "closes the door in the face" of the seller kindly.

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

The customer feels that he is offering him a real bargain, since he is going to get a watch that was worth much more at first. The watch itself still has a real value of only € 50, which means that the customer is going to pay twice what 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 whoever sells you the watch is doing you a favor and now has to make it up to you by buying the watch.

This is a very good example of using the door-to-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 first that the watch was worth € 100, it is quite likely that the potential buyer would not have acquired it. On the other hand, by the simple fact of giving them the option to compare prices and that the second is much lower than the first, the customer is motivated to buy it. This is how business works.

• You may be interested in: "5 tricks to sell used by the big brands"

Why do we accept the second claim?

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

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

Another explanation is the one suggested by Robert Cialdini himself. The researcher said that people interpret the least difficulty of the second demand or request as a sign of commitment from someone who asks us for a favor. That is, people see the fact that whoever wants us to do him a favor offers us a second option as a favor in himself. As that person does us the personal favor of giving up his first offer to make us one that suits us better, We, moved by the norm of social reciprocity, are compelled to accept his second offer and return that favor.

Finally, another of the explanations that have been considered to explain why the technique of the door in the face works has to do with our desire to maintain a good social image, especially in front of people who matter to us, such as friends, family or other close and loved 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 ourselves to anything. For this reason, by telling us the second option we accept it more easily with the clear intention that any damage that we may have caused to our social image be corrected Or, at least, it doesn't get worse. Accepting the second request we see as an opportunity to show that we are neither selfish nor bad people.

Influential factors in persuasion

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

Research carried out in 1999 by Chartrand's group and colleagues from the University of Santa Clara experimentally addressed the influence of the delay time in offering the second option. 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 seen that in the group that had taken the longest time to give them the second option, there was greater acceptance of it.

One of the possible explanations for this finding is that by giving them a wide space of time between the first and second offer participants had time to feel bad for having rejected the first petition. The more time passes, the more they think about having turned down the first favor that was asked of them., however surreal or exaggerated it was. They may even start to think about the damage they imagine they have done to their image after being rejected, believing that people think they are bad people.

Instead, If the two offers are given close together, people don't have time to think about how bad it has been to reject the first offer.. They do not have the chance or enough time to even think that rejecting the first option is damaging their social image, nor does it give them time to feel guilty. This means that, although they are going to compare the second offer with the first, they are not as likely to be accepted as in the group in which there is enough time to think.

Another research observed how the degree of relationship with the person who asks us for a favor influences whether we agree to do so or not. In 2000 Murray Millar's team from the University of Nevada investigated the extent to which the fact that he is a friend or family member who asks us for favors increases or reduces the possibility that we fall into the technique of the door in the face.

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 rejected the first. On the other hand, if the person who asks us for favors is a total stranger, although the second favor that he asks us is less exaggerated and irrational 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 being Dear.

Bibliographic 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
• 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. Taken from 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