Basic manipulation effects

Foot in the door effect

Classic FITD experiments

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-hr enumeration of household products. The investigators found these women were more than twice as likely to agree to the 2-hr request than a group of housewives asked only the larger request. More recently, persons were asked to call for a taxi if they became alcohol impaired. Half of the persons 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.

Using FITD to foster sustainable behavior

The foot-in-the door technique relates to environmental sustainability in a number of ways and is a way to help foster the world to “go green.” The foot-in-the-door techniques applications to fostering sustainable behavior believe that behaviors are changed to maintain consistency. When people seem to make public commitments they seem more likely to commit to the next big thing. A public commitment always outweighs a reward when changing sustainable behavior. Some behaviors that have been changed regarding sustainable behavior in some studies was in the Werner Study where people recycled more grass clippings if the researcher asked them to talk to neighbors about it (Werner 1995). Another behavior change was people asked to complete a survey about recycling also increased in recycling (Arbuthnot 1977).

The foot-in-the door technique has also been used to conserve energy in a study conducted by Pallak, Cook, and Sullivan in 1980. Families were asked to volunteer in conservation studies and were randomly assigned to groups. One group was asked for their names to be published in a newspaper and the other group wasn’t asked. The group that agreed for their names to be published showed a 15% reduction in gas use and 20% reduction of electricity than the group not asked. This suggests that the foot-in-the-door technique works when it comes to making the world more sustainable.

 Examples

• "Would you sign this petition for our cause?" followed by "Would you donate to our cause?"

This is a valid example, because when someone expresses support for an idea or concept, that person is more likely to then remain consistent with their prior expression of support by committing to it in a more concrete fashion.

• "Can I go over to Suzy's house for an hour?" followed by "Can I stay the night?"
• "Can I borrow the car to go to the store?" followed by "Can I borrow the car for the weekend?"
• "May I turn in the paper a few hours late?" followed by "May I turn it in next week?"

Depending on the time frame, these may be bad examples because, in all 3 cases, it is actually easier to remain consistent with the first request by denying the second than by accepting it. For example, in the first request, the requestee has already agreed to a precise 1 hour time period and if immediately asked, likely will not agree to a different time period, 8 hours or so. On the other hand, for example, if in the first example the person waited two weeks, then made the second request, it would be a good example.

DOOR IN THE FACE EFFECT

The door-in-the-face (DITF) technique is a persuasion method. Compliance with the request of concern is enhanced by first making an extremely large request that the respondent will obviously turn down, with a metaphorical slamming of a door in the persuader's face. The respondent is then more likely to accede to a second, more reasonable request than if this second request were made without the first, extreme request. Robert Cialdini (Cialdini, 2000) suggests this as a form of reciprocity, i.e. the (induced) sharp negative response to the first request creates a sense of debt or guilt that the second request offers to clear. Alternately, a reference point (or framing) construal may explain this phenomenon, as the initial bad offer sets a reference point from which the second offer looks like an improvement.

Classic experiment

One of the classic experiments to test the door in the face technique is where Cialdini asked students to volunteer to counsel juvenile delinquents for two hours a week for two years. After their refusal, they were asked to chaperone juvenile delinquents on a one-day trip to the zoo. 50% agreed to chaperone the trip to the zoo as compared to 17% of participants who only received the zoo request. Additionally, Cialdini created a control group where the experimenter described both the extreme and the smaller favor, and then the participant was requested to perform either one. Only 25% of the students agreed to the zoo request. This demonstrates that exposure to the more extreme task is irrevelant and does not greatly affect compliance. Door-in-the-face technique will only affect compliance rates if the extreme request is rejected first (Cialdini, Vincent, Lewis, Catalan, Wheeler & Darby, 1975).

The size of the initial request

It appears that the door-in-the-face effect is limited to situations in which the size of the initial request is extremely large. An experiment was conducted (Even-Chen, Yinon, Bizman, 1978) in which students were divided into three groups. The control group was given only the small request and asked to pick up at least 15 brochures for an organization and distribute them to their friends. The second group was asked to sit at an intersection for two hours and observe traffic violations and then was presented with the smaller request. The third group of students was asked to join an organization and volunteer 2 hours per week for 2 years and then was presented with the smaller request. Only 29.2% agreed in the control group, 15.5% of participants complied in the second group, and 43.1% complied in the third group. Because the first request was so extreme, more students complied in the third group. In sum, based on findings of both Cialdini (1975) and the experiment described (Even-Chen, Yinon, Bzman, 1978) above, it may be concluded that the crucial conditions for the occurrence of the door-in-the-face effect are: the original request must be rejected by the target person, the original request should be large enough so that its rejection will be perceived by the target person as irrelevant for making self-attribution, the original request should not evoke in the target person resentment, anger, or hostility, and the second request must be unambiguously smaller than the first one (Even-Chen, Yinon, Bizman, 1978).

DITF vs. FITD

Foot-in-the-door technique can be defined as a gradual-persuasion technique in which an initial, modest request precedes a larger request (Burger, 1999). In contrast, door-in-the-face technique involves a larger request that the recipient will refuse and then is provided a more realistic request. A study in 2004 (Rodafinos, Vucevic, Sideris, 2005) measured the effectiveness of both techniques and performed an experiment testing which method increased compliance rates more. Students were (a) asked a small request (two short questions regarding racism) and then a moderate target request (FITD) or (b) a large initial request (to attend ten 1-hr seminars about racism) and then a moderate target request (DITF). The door-in-the-face technique produced significantly more compliance (75.8%) compared to the foot-in-the-door technique (48.5%) (Rodafinos, Vucevic, Sideridis, 2005).

Why DITF works

There are two lines of evidence suggesting that door-in-the face would be efficacious in producing compliance. The first sort of evidence comes from work investigating the concept of reciprocation. Gouldner (1960) maintains that a norm of reciprocity exists in all societies. Gouldner states the norm of reciprocity in its simple form as: "You should give benefits to those who give you benefits" (p. 170). Very often in social interaction participants begin with requirements and demands which are unacceptable to one another. In order for the interaction to continue and hence for common goals to be achieved, compromise must be struck. Evidence for the existence of a reciprocal concessions relationship in our society can be seen in numerous terms and phrases of the language: "give and take," "meeting the other fellow halfway," etc (Cialdini, Vincent, Lewis, Catalan, Wheeler & Darby, 1975).

BAIT-AND-SWITCH

Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud, most commonly used in retail sales but also applicable to other contexts. First, customers are "baited" by advertising for a product or service at a low price; second, the customers discover that the advertised good is not available and are "switched" to a costlier product.

Function

The goal of the bait-and-switch is to persuade buyers to purchase the substitute goods as a means of avoiding disappointment over not getting the bait, or as a way to recover sunk costs expended to try to obtain the bait. It suggests that the seller will not show the original product or service advertised but instead will demonstrate a more expensive product or a similar product with a higher margin.

Legality

In the United States, courts have held that the purveyor using a bait-and-switch operation may be subject to a lawsuit by customers for false advertising, and can be sued for trademark infringement by competing manufacturers, retailers, and others who profit from the sale of the product used as bait. However, no cause of action will exist if the purveyor is capable of actually selling the goods advertised, but aggressively pushes a competing product.

Likewise, advertising a sale while intending to stock a limited amount of, and thereby sell out, a loss-leading item advertised is legal in the United States. The purveyor can escape liability if they make clear in their advertisements that quantities of items for which a sale is offered are limited, or by offering a rain check on sold-out items.

Bait-and-switch tactics are frequently used in airline and air travel advertising.

In England and Wales it is banned under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Breaking this law can result in a criminal prosecution, an unlimited fine and two years in jail.

Employers are also known to use bait-and-switch tactics by advertising a job opening in a way that gives a misleading impression of likely working conditions or compensation packages.

In politics

In lawmaking, "caption bills" that propose minor changes in law with simplistic titles (the bait) are introduced to the legislature with the ultimate objective of substantially changing the wording (the switch) at a later date in order to try to smooth the passage of a controversial or major amendment. Rule changes are also proposed (the bait) to meet legal requirements for public notice and mandated public hearings, then different rules are proposed at a final meeting (the switch), thus bypassing the objective of public notice and public discussion on the actual rules voted upon. While legal, the political objective is to get legislation or rules passed without anticipated negative community review.

Camel's nose

The camel's nose is a metaphor for a situation where permitting some small undesirable situation will allow gradual and unavoidable worsening. A typical usage is this, from U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater in 1958:

This bill and the foregoing remarks of the majority remind me of an old Arabian proverb: "If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow." If adopted, the legislation will mark the inception of aid, supervision, and ultimately control of education in this country by the federal authorities.

According to Geoffrey Nunberg, the image entered the English language in the middle of the 19th century.^[2] An early example is a fable printed in 1858 in which an Arab miller allows a camel to stick its nose into his bedroom, then other parts of its body, until the camel is entirely inside and refuses to leave. Lydia Sigourney wrote another version, a widely reprinted poem for children, in which the camel enters a shop because the workman does not forbid it at any stage.

The 1858 example above says, "The Arabs repeat a fable," and Sigourney says in a footnote, "To illustrate the danger of the first approach of evil habit, the Arabs have a proverb, "Beware of the camel's nose". However, Nunberg could not find an Arab source for the saying and suspected it was a Victorian invention.

An early citation with a tent is "The camel in the Arabian tale begged and received permission to insert his nose into the desert tent." By 1878, the expression was familiar enough that part of the story could be left unstated. "It is the humble petition of the camel, who only asks that he may put his nose into the traveler's tent. It is so pitiful, so modest, that we must needs relent and grant it."

In a 1915 book of fables by Horace Scudder, the story, titled The Arab and His Camel, ends with the moral: "It is a wise rule to resist the beginnings of evil."

The phrase was used in Reed v. King (193 CA Rptr. 130 - 1983): "The paramount argument against an affirmative conclusion is it permits the camel's nose of unrestrained irrationality admission to the tent. If such an "irrational" consideration is permitted as a basis of rescission the stability of all conveyances will be seriously undermined." The case in question involved a plaintiff suing because the defendant sold a house without telling them that the house's previous inhabitants had been brutally murdered 10 years earlier.

There are a number of other metaphors and expressions which refer to small changes leading to chains of events with undesirable or unexpected consequences, differing in nuances.

• Foot in the door - a persuasion technique
• Slippery slope - an argument, sometimes fallacious
• "The thin end of the wedge"'
• Domino effect
• For Want of a Nail (proverb) - the claim that large consequences may follow from inattention to small details
• Boiling frog
• "Give them an inch; they'll take a mile" The original saying goes "Give them an inch, and they'll take an ell".
• In Chinese culture, the "inch-mile" saying corresponds to the expression 得陇望蜀 (De Long Wang Shu), which is a quotation from the Book of Later Han about a Chinese general who took over Long (now Gansu) only to pursue further southwards into Shu (now Sichuan).

For comparison, positive consequences may start from small acts, and there is a similar set of sayings like Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching:^{[citation needed]} "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" (or "A journey of a thousand li begins with a single step").

Relating this sentiment in idiom to scientific observation, the notion that large-scale phenomena may be affected by tiny initial incidents is the essence of chaos theory. However, in all the examples above, the result of the tiny initial incident is supposed to be predictable, unlike in chaos theory:

COMPLIANCE

In psychology, compliance refers to the act of responding favorably to an explicit or implicit request offered by others. The request may be explicit, such as a direct request for donations, or implicit, such as an advertisement promoting its products without directly asking for purchase. In all cases, the target recognizes that he or she is being urged to respond in a desired way.

To study the compliance professions from the inside, Cialdini (2001) joined training programs of a different compliance professions (sales, advertising, public relations, etc.) and started the participant observation. He found that some principles are commonly used to increase the probability of successful compliance, including reciprocation, credibility, liking/friendship, scarcity and social validation.

Reciprocation

Based on the social norm “treat others as you would expect to be treated”, when someone does us a favor, it creates an obligation to accept any reasonable requests he or she might make in return. We feel a motivation to reciprocate. For instance if someone does something for you (such as giving you a compliment), then you feel more obligated to do something for them (buy a product they may be offering). Failing to respond leads to violation of our obligation to reciprocate and bears the risk of social sanction. According to Carlsmith & Gross (1969) , guilt arousal produces an increase in compliance. People who are induced to guilt are more likely to comply with a request such as making a phone call to save native trees or donating blood.

 Research findings

The principle of reciprocation can be demonstrated by experiment. In one such experiment, participants acted as subjects to answer questions under two conditions. When they answered wrongly, participants acted as shock administer and delivered shock in condition A while participants acted as witness, witnessing subjects being shocked in condition B. After a few trials, requests for making calls were made. Results showed that participants in condition A were more likely to comply with the requests by making many more calls (39 calls) than those in condition B (6.5 calls). It is because participants in condition A comply with the requests in order to ward off their guilty feeling.

 Credibility

The source of requests will also affect whether we comply or not. If the source is an expert, with knowledge, abilities or skills, i.e. more credible, we would respect the request more and would be more likely to comply. This principle is used as a marketing strategy, where they put on white lab coats which, from a consumer's point of view, will symbolise authority.

 Research findings

One study demonstrated the effect of credibility. Bochner & Insko (1966)  invited five hundred university students to join the study about their opinion of sleep. In the first stage, students gave their opinion on the optimum length of sleep and the average result was about eight hours. Then, students received advice from two sources, one was a physiologist who had won a Nobel Prize before and was a specialist on sleep research; the other one was a YMCA instructor. Clearly, the former one represented a more credible source while the latter one represented a less credible source. Two experts varied their answer about the number of sleeping hours needed every day from eight to zero. Therefore, the discrepancy between the student’s answer and the expert’s answer increased from zero to eight. After consulting the experts, students were asked to give their opinion again about the number of sleeping hours.

Result was shown in a graph beside. When the experts’ opinion was different from that of students, students were more likely to change their own answers after they got the advice from the physiologist (more credible source) than from the YMCA instructor (less credible source). Therefore, a high credibility source makes people more likely to comply. This may explain why advertisements nowadays always quote experts’ opinion or construct a sense of expertise by showing a professional figure. Complaince can also occur in a persons self dicipsline and the way they behave

 Other related experiments

Stanley Milgram, (1963). The Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority figures.

 Liking/Friendship

People are more likely to say yes to those they know and like because of the social exchange theory, which states that human relationships are formed by using a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives  Thus, complying with a person we like certainly is more favorable. This principle is used by salesmen all over the world. The principle of liking is common within neighborhoods, neighbors selling and buying things from each other. When you feel that you trust a person you feel more obliged to buy the thing that this person is selling.

 Research findings

In an experiment conducted by Dennis (2006), 115 female and 94 male undergraduate students were requested to complete a questionnaire asking them the degree of intimacy with their partners. Besides, participants were also asked to consider 32 behavioral change messages (e.g. smoking cessation, safe sex practice, etc.) as if these were delivered to them by their partners and to estimate their effectiveness on a 5-point scale. The result showed that higher levels of intimacy within romantic relationships are significantly and positively correlated with the estimated success of appeals targeted at health-related behavioral motivations.

 Scarcity

The scarcity effect refers to the influence of perceived scarcity on the subjective desirability of an object. Individuals do not want to be left alone without an item. A consumer often infers value in a product that has limited availability or is promoted as being scarce. The idea of "Limited edition" which can be seen all over the world is based on the principle of scarcity. When we see that an object is limited we feel the urge to buy them in order to not be left out. This also relates to the key explanation to one of the fundamental concepts in economics "Supply and Demand". Recent research examines the scarcity effect and its influence on the proclivity for consumers to compete with one another (Nichols, 2010) .

 Research findings

A classical experiment was done by Worchel et al. (1975). Jars of chocolate chip cookies were shown to the subjects who were then asked to rate ‘how much do you like the cookies’, ‘how attractive the cookies are’ and ‘how much would you pay for the cookies’. Results found that the rating of liking, attractiveness and cost willing paid were significantly higher in the scarcity condition in which there were only 2 cookies in the jar than in the abundant condition with 10 cookies in the jar. Therefore, suggesting that the product is scarce or in limited supply is an effective selling method. People are more likely to comply with the salesmen’s persuasion and buy the limited edition products as they value more on scarce products. Nichols (2010) examined the effect of scarcity claims in advertising. The findings indicate that time scarcity and product supply scarcity operate differently, and refute some previous indications that owning scarce goods is driven by a individual's inherent need to feel unique.

 Other related experiments

Jae Min Jung & James J. Kellaris, (2004). Cross-national Differences in Proneness to Scarcity Effects: The Moderating Roles of Familiarity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Need for Cognitive Closure. Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 21(9): 739-753.
Nichols, Bridget M Satinover, "Exploring and Explaining Consumer Competition: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding the Phenomenon. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2010

 Social validation

Social Validation, also called "Principle of Conformity and Consensus", in compliance is a phenomenon in which people are more willing to take a recommended step if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others, are taking it. The human need to fit in is very strong and tends to make us comply in order to be a part of the majority.(Compare: Herd behavior in human societies.)

 Research findings

Schultz (1999) had conducted a “Field Experiment on Curbside Recycling” to observe participants’ curbside recycling behaviors for 17 weeks with different interventions. In the experiment, 5 conditions namely, ‘plea’, ‘plea plus information’, ‘plea plus neighborhood feedback’, ‘plea plus individual household feedback’, or the control condition are observed. Among these conditions, the ‘Plea plus neighborhood feedback’ condition (in which subjects receive the total amount of each material collected for the duration of the study and the percentage of households participated that week) shows the most long lasting participation during post-intervention. This unveils the underlying strong influence of social validation in compliance.

On business front, manufacturers often persuade purchase by claiming that their products are the fastest growing or best selling in the market. Cialdini (2001) ^[19] has pointed out that this strategy of enhancing compliance by providing information of others who had already complied was the most widely used principle he encountered.

 Commitment

Commitment to a store or a company (induced by loyalty cards or bonuses) can make it harder for a person to change where they shop or what they purchase.

LOW BALL

The low-ball is a persuasion and selling technique in which an item or service is offered at a lower price than is actually intended to be charged, after which the price is raised to increase profits.
An explanation for the effect is provided by cognitive dissonance theory. If a person is already enjoying the prospect of an excellent deal and the future benefits of the item or idea then backing out would create cognitive dissonance, which is prevented by playing down the negative effect of the "extra" costs.

Low-ball technique

A successful low-ball relies on the balance of making the initial request attractive enough to gain agreement, whilst not making the second request so outrageous that the customer refuses.

• First propose an attractive price on an idea/item which you are confident that the other person/buyer will accept.
• Maximize their buy-in, in particular by getting both verbal and public commitment to this, e.g., a down payment or a handshake.
• Make it clear that the decision to purchase is of their own free will.
• Change the agreement to what you really want. The person/buyer may complain, but they should agree to the change if the low-ball is managed correctly.

SLIPERRY SLOPE

n debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope (also known as thin edge of the wedge, or the camel's nose) is a classic form of argument, arguably an informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect, much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom The strength of such an argument depends on the warrant, i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process which leads to the significant effect. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B. Modern usage avoids the fallacy by acknowledging the possibility of this middle ground.

The argument takes on one of various semantical forms:

• In the classical form, the arguer suggests that making a move in a particular direction starts something on a path down a "slippery slope". Having started down the metaphorical slope, it will continue to slide in the same direction (the arguer usually sees the direction as a negative direction, hence the "sliding downwards" metaphor).
• Modern usage includes a logically valid form, in which a minor action causes a significant impact through a long chain of logical relationships. Note that establishing this chain of logical implication (or quantifying the relevant probabilities) makes this form logically valid. The slippery slope argument remains a fallacy if such a chain is not established.
• Some claims lie in between the two. For example: "If we accept censorship on most disgusting material, the politicians may easily widen the area under censorship. This has happened often before too, with far-reaching consequences. Therefore, we should completely avoid the slippery slope of censorship." This claim is not a fallacy: some people think that there is enough evidence for the claim to be probably true, some not.

Examples

Eugene Volokh's Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope (PDF version) analyzes various types of such slippage. Volokh uses the example "gun registration may lead to gun confiscation" to describe six types of slippage:

1. Cost-lowering: Once all gun-owners have registered their firearms, the government will know exactly from whom to confiscate them.
2. Legal rule combination: Previously the government might need to search every house to confiscate guns, and such a search would violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Registration would eliminate that problem.
3. Attitude altering: People may begin to think of gun ownership as a privilege rather than a right, and thus regard gun confiscation less seriously.
4. Small change tolerance, colloquially referred to as the "boiling frog": People may ignore gun registration because it constitutes just a small change, but when combined with other small changes, it could lead to the equivalent of confiscation.
5. Political power: The hassle of registration may reduce the number of gun owners, and thus the political power of the gun-ownership bloc.
6. Political momentum: Once the government has passed this gun law it becomes easier to pass other gun laws, including laws like confiscation.

Slippery slope can also be used as a retort to the establishment of arbitrary boundaries or limitations. For example, one might argue that rent prices must be kept to $1,000 or less a month to be affordable to tenants in an area of a city. A retort invoking the slippery slope could go in two different directions:

• Once such price ceilings become accepted, they could be slowly lowered, eventually driving out the landlords and worsening the problem.
• If a $1,000 monthly rent is affordable, why isn't $1,025 or $1,050? By lumping the tenants into one abstract entity, the argument renders itself vulnerable to a slippery slope argument. A more careful argument in favor of price ceilings would statistically characterize the number of tenants who can afford housing at various levels based on income and choose a ceiling that achieves a specific goal, such as housing 80% of the working families in the area.

Sometimes a single action does indeed induce similar latter action. For example, judiciary decisions may set legal precedents.

The slippery slope as fallacy

The heart of the slippery slope fallacy lies in abusing the intuitively appreciable transitivity of implication, claiming that A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D and so on, until one finally claims that A leads to Z. While this is formally valid when the premises are taken as a given, each of those contingencies needs to be factually established before the relevant conclusion can be drawn. Slippery slope fallacies occur when this is not done—an argument that supports the relevant premises is not fallacious and thus isn't a slippery slope fallacy.
Often proponents of a "slippery slope" contention propose a long series of intermediate events as the mechanism of connection leading from A to B. The "camel's nose" provides one example of this: once a camel has managed to place its nose within a tent, the rest of the camel will inevitably follow. In this sense the slippery slope resembles the genetic fallacy, but in reverse.
As an example of how an appealing slippery slope argument can be unsound, suppose that whenever a tree falls down, it has a 95% chance of knocking over another tree. We might conclude that soon a great many trees would fall, but this is not the case. There is a 5% chance that no more trees will fall, a 4.75% chance that exactly one more tree will fall (and thus a 9.75% chance of 1 or fewer additional trees falling), and so on. There is a 92.3% chance that 50 or fewer additional trees will fall. The expected value of trees that will fall is 20. In the absence of some momentum factor that makes later trees more likely to fall than earlier ones, this "domino effect" approaches zero probability.
This form of argument often provides evaluative judgments on social change: once an exception is made to some rule, nothing will hold back further, more egregious exceptions to that rule.
Note that these arguments may indeed have validity, but they require some independent justification of the connection between their terms: otherwise the argument (as a logical tool) remains fallacious.
The "slippery slope" approach may also relate to the conjunction fallacy: with a long string of steps leading to an undesirable conclusion, the chance of all the steps actually occurring in sequence is less than the chance of any one of the individual steps occurring alone.