The Effectiveness of the Door-in-the-Face Compliance Strategy on Friends and Strangers

Abstract

The author examined the impact of the door-in-the-face procedure on concerns about self-presentation and hypothesized that (a) when a friend made door-in-the-face requests, the procedure would increase the participant's concern about self-presentation more than would a single request and (b) when a stranger made door-in-the-face requests, the procedure would not increase the participant's concern about self-presentation more than would a single request. Either friends or strangers presented requests to the participants. Half the requests were in a door-in-the-face format, and the other half were single requests. After receiving the request(s), the participants completed measures of self-presentation concerns and compliance with the request. The results supported the hypothesis.

Key Words:

• compliance
• door-in-the-face
• friends
• negative affect
• perceptual contrast
• reciprocal concessions
• self-presentation
• strangers