Communication Yearbook 21

Michael Roloff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135152710
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Communication Yearbook 21 reflects the rich diversity of the field of communication, both in terms of content areas and methods. The topics of the eleven reviews range from interpersonal influence to media practices and effects. The authors address issues such as organizational democracy and change, intercultural negotiation, journalism and broadcasting practices, the management off crisis and the relationship between media and the presidency. The volume was originally published in 1998. In addressing these issues, narratives, historical accounts and meta-analytic techniques are employed.

1 The Door-In-The-Face Influence Strategy: a Random-Effects Meta-Analytic Review

Daniel J. O’Keefe
Scott L. Hale

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

A random-effects meta-analysis of research concerning the door-in-the-face (DITF) influence strategy provides evidence supporting more confident generalizations about the role of several moderator variables than that provided by previous reviews. Variations in the identity of the requester, the identity of the beneficiary, the prosocialness of the requests, the medium of communication, and the time interval between requests all appear to influence the size of DITF effects; variations in concession size do not. DITF effects are small in absolute terms (with an overall mean r of .10), but not remarkably small in the context of other effect sizes concerning social influence. However, there is substantial variability in DITF effects, even under optimal conditions. The review’s findings are not easily reconciled with most proposed explanations of DITF effects, but appear consistent with a guilt-based account.

The door-in-the-face (DITF) influence strategy is a much-studied means of social influence. Systematic research concerning the DITF strategy began more than 20 years ago, with Cialdini et al.’s (1975) classic work. Two meta-analytic reviews of the DITF literature appeared about a decade later (Dillard, Hunter, & Burgoon, 1984; Fern, Monroe, & Avila, 1986). A good deal of DITF research has appeared following those reviews, and though there has been some discussion of this research area (e.g., Dillard, 1991), no subsequent systematic review has been undertaken.

This chapter reports a meta-analytic review of the DITF research literature. Our broad purpose is to assess the current state of the literature, taking into account the studies undertaken since the last meta-analytic reviews. In doing so, we also hope to address some uncertainties arising from previous reviews, to shed light on possible new moderators of DITF effects, and to consider possible explanations for the observed effects.

Background

The DITF Strategy

In the DITF strategy, a relatively large initial request is made of a person, which the person declines. Then a subsequent smaller request is made, in the hopes that the person’s having declined the initial request (having metaphorically closed the door in the face of the requester) will make the person more likely to comply with the second (target) request. In experimental investigations of the strategy, researchers assess DITF success by comparing target-request compliance rates in a DITF condition with the corresponding compliance rates in a control condition in which participants receive only the target request.

For example, in Cialdini et al.’s (1975, Experiment 1) classic study, people were approached on a campus sidewalk by another student purportedly representing the “County Youth Counseling Program.” In the DITF condition, a large initial request was made—that the receiver spend 2 hours a week, for a minimum of 2 years, working as an unpaid volunteer counselor at the County Juvenile Detention Center. No one agreed to this request. The smaller second request was that the receiver serve as an unpaid volunteer chaperone, spending 2 hours one afternoon or evening taking a group of juveniles from the Detention Center to visit the zoo. In the control condition, in which participants heard only the smaller (target) request, 17% consented to serve as a chaperone. In the DITF condition, in which the initial large request had been declined, 50% agreed to chaperone.

Previous Meta-Analytic Findings

The two previous meta-analytic reviews of DITF research reported that the overall observed mean DITF effect (that is, the difference between the target-request compliance in the DITF condition and in a control condition in which only the target request is received) is roughly equivalent to a correlation of .08 (Dillard et al., 1984, p. 471; Fern et al., 1986, p. 150).

These reviews also examined the effects of four specific moderator variables. First, the effects of varying time intervals between the first and second requests were examined by both extant meta-analyses. Each reported that DITF effects were larger when there was no delay between the two requests than when some time elapsed (Dillard et al., 1984, p. 478; Fern et al., 1986, p. 149). Second, the effect of variation in the identity of the requester was studied by Fern et al. (1986, p. 149), who found that DITF effects tended to be larger when the same person made both requests than when different persons made the two requests. Third, the influence of the prosocialness of the requests was reviewed by Dillard et al. (1984, pp. 478–479). They found that DITF effects were larger when the requests came from prosocial organizations (e.g., civic or environmental groups) than when they came from nonprosocial organizations (e.g., marketing firms). Fourth, the role of the size of the concession made—that is, the size of the drop in request size from the first to the second request—was examined by Fern et al. (1986, p. 149). Their review found that variations in the magnitude of concession were not dependably associated with variations in DITF effect size.

Explaining DITF Effects

Cialdini et al. (1975) advanced what is probably the best-known explanation of DITF effects, the reciprocal-concessions explanation. This explanation proposes that the sequence of requests makes the situation appear to be a negotiation or bargaining situation, and hence a situation in which a concession by one side (the requester’s making a smaller second request) is expected to be reciprocated by a concession from the other side (the person’s accepting the second request). In fact, Cialdini et al. went so far as to label the procedure the “reciprocal concessions technique.”

However, as several commentators have suggested, the reciprocal-concessions explanation does not appear to be entirely satisfactory (see, e.g., Dillard, 1991). In particular, the finding that concession size does not influence DITF effects appears inconsistent with the explanation; if the explanation were true, one would expect that larger concessions would yield larger effects. Additionally, this explanation obviously does not provide an explanation for the finding that DITF effects are larger with prosocial than with nonprosocial requests.

Another proposed explanation invokes perceptual-contrast effects (Miller, Seligman, Clark, & Bush, 1976). The suggestion is that the second request is perceived as smaller than it actually is because of a perceptual contrast with the larger first request. That is, the second request appears less demanding when it is seen against the backdrop of the larger initial request (and hence engenders greater compliance).

But the perceptual-contrast explanation appears incapable of accommodating the previously observed effects of moderator variables. Specifically, it does not explain why, from a perceptual-contrast standpoint, DITF effects should vary depending on whether the same person makes the requests. Nor does this explanation appear to offer any clear account of why DITF effects should be larger with prosocial than with nonprosocial requests. Moreover, direct evidence bearing specifically on the perceptual-contrast explanation gives little support to this account (Abrahams & Bell, 1994; Cantrill & Seibold, 1986; Goldman, McVeigh, & Richterkessing, 1984).

Self-presentational concerns have also been suggested as a possible explanation of DITF effects. This account proposes that rejection of the first request makes receivers concerned that they will be negatively evaluated by the requester (Pendleton & Batson, 1979). But the self-presentation explanation is also difficult to square with the research evidence in hand. As Abrahams and Bell (1994, p. 136) have noted, DF effects have repeatedly been obtained in circumstances in which self-presentational considerations should not be especially strong (as, for instance, in interaction between strangers who are unlikely ever to interact again). Moreover, the initial findings suggesting the plausibility of this account (Pendleton & Batson, 1979) have proved difficult to replicate (Reeves, Baker, Boyd, & Cialdini, 1991), and subsequent direct tests (Abrahams & Bell, 1994) have also failed to confirm expectations of the self-presentation explanation.

A final possible explanation is based on guilt (O’Keefe & Figgé, 1997). The suggestion is that DITF success comes about through a guilt-arousal-and-reduction process, in which rejecting the first request induces guilt in the receiver and accepting the second request reduces that guilt. This explanation appears to be capable of encompassing the moderator-variable effects reported in previous meta-analytic reviews. Specifically, the observed effect for prosocialness is explained as a consequence of persons feeling greater guilt when declining prosocial requests than when declining nonprosocial requests. The apparent time-interval effect is taken to occur because with increased delay between the requests, any induced guilt has greater opportunity to dissipate. The observed identical-requester effect is seen to arise because a second request that comes from a different requester does not offer the same guilt-reduction possibilities as a second request from the same person whose request was just declined.

This explanation is also consistent with current research about guilt. (This literature, addressed at some length by O’Keefe & Figgé, 1997, is only briefly summarized here.) For example, this account harmonizes with current theoretical and empirical understandings of the nature of guilt. By way of illustration: Roseman, Wiest, and Swartz (1994) found that among the reactions distinctively associated with guilt were “thinking that you were in the wrong,” “thinking that you shouldn’t have done what you did,” “feeling like undoing what you have done,” “wanting to make up for what you’ve done wrong,” and the like (see p. 215). It is easy to imagine how (for instance) refusing to help troubled children might lead to such feelings and how the second request in the DITF sequence might offer the prospect of making up for what one has done. As another example, Baumeister, Stillwell, and Heatherton (1994) have emphasized that guilt arises from interpersonal transactions and is particularly linked to “suffering that oneself has caused” (p. 246); from such a vantage point, the DITF strategy can be seen to involve an interpersonal transaction in which the refusal of the initial request might involve the infliction of suffering on another person.

Additionally, this explanation appears consistent with extant research findings concerning guilt-based social influence. There are two areas of such research. In the first, researchers have explored the relationship between guilt and compliance with altruistic requests by inducing guilt in participants (by having them inflict harm on another) and subsequently making altruistic requests of them. A number of studies have found that gui...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• 1. The Door-in-the-Face Influence Strategy: A Random-Effects Meta-Analytic Review
• 2. Democracy, Participation, and Communication at Work: A Multidisciplinary Review
• 3. Reconceptualizing Organizational Change Implementation as a Communication Problem: A Review of Literature and Research Agenda
• 4. The Business of Business Negotiation: Intercultural Perspectives
• 5. Constructing a Theoretical Framework for Evaluating Public Relations Programs and Activities
• 6. Communication, Organization, and Crisis
• 7. Old Wine in a New Bottle: Public Journalism, Developmental Journalism, and Social Responsibility
• 8. Programming Theory Under Stress: The Active Industry and the Active Audience
• 9. Quick Communicators: Editorial Cartoonists in Communication Overdrive
• 10. The Rhetorical Presidency: Deepening Vision, Widening Exchange
• 11. Attention, Resource Allocation, and Communication Research: What Do Secondary Task Reaction Times Measure, Anyway?
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Editor
• About the Authors