Blood donation and the foot-in-the-door technique: A limiting case.

Abstract

Three experiments testing the effectiveness of the foot-in-the-door technique for recruiting blood donors consistently failed to demonstrate that this procedure influences either verbal or behavioral compliance, suggesting that the generality of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon is limited.Experiment 1 attempted to demonstrate that an earlier failure of this technique was due to poor operationalization rather than to the magnitude of the critical request or to the invalidity of the phenomenon, but it failed to do so.Experiment 2, designed to more closely resemble other foot-in-the-door studies by using telephone contacts and an initial request for persons to answer questions, was conducted to examine other possible explanations for the two previous failures.This experiment also failed to show any foot-in-the-door effect.Experiment 3 was a conceptual replication of Experiment 2 but used personal contacts.One apparent foot-in-the-door effect emerged in this case, but it was more likely due to a factor other than the experimental treatment.It is concluded that although the foot-in-the-door procedure may indeed influence verbal compliance with requests for minimal forms of aid, it probably will not significantly affect people's willingness to comply with more substantial requests involving behaviors that are psychologically costly to perform.A number of recent investigations of the effects of compliance with a small request on subsequent compliance with a more substantial request (the "foot-in-the-door" phenomenon) suggest the possibility of a direct and exciting application of social psychologicalThe authors wish to express their appreciation to Morris White of the Asheville Regional Blood Center of the American Red Cross and Thomas Brinson of the MEDIC organization for their cooperation and assistance on this project and to Gail Whisenant for assisting with data collection in Experiment 1.A special note of appreciation is also due Anthony Greenwald for his careful consideration and comments on an earlier version of this article.