Guilt and expected guilt in the door‐in‐the‐face technique

Abstract

Three studies are reported concerning the guilt‐based explanation of the door‐in‐the‐face (DITF) technique, which proposes that in successful DITF implementations, first‐request refusal generates guilt that is reduced by second‐request compliance. An initial experiment confirmed that, consistent with this explanation, rejection of a prosocial request evoked more guilt than did rejection of a nonprosocial request. A second experiment provided further confirmation that request rejection can elicit guilt in the expected ways, but found that second‐request compliance did not provide the predicted guilt reduction. A third experiment suggested that second‐request compliance may be motivated by the expectation that compliance will reduce guilt.

Key words:

• Door‐in‐the‐Face
• Compliance
• Guilt
• Anticipated Guilt
• Anticipated Emotion