Inducing Compliance by a Two-Door-in-the-Face Procedure and a Self-Determination Request

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Abstract
The door-in-the-face (“face”) is a procedure for increasing compliance. An individual is first asked to carry out a difficult task, which is almost always refused, and this is followed by a more moderate second request, the one that was actually desired. The current study devised a two-door-in-the-face (“two-face”) procedure, where the moderate request is preceded by both an extremely hard and a hard request, and examined whether this “two-face” procedure increased compliance when compared to the typical “face” procedure. In addition, the study examined whether a “self-determination” request, where the individual decides the level of help to offer, would produce more compliance than a fixed request, which specifies the level of help wanted. The Ss, 192 persons randomly selected from the telephone directory, were called and asked to help a new radio station. The results showed that the “two-face” when compared to the typical “face” procedure, and the self-determination request when compared to the fixed request significantly increased compliance.