Does the Foot in the Door Still Work
The 76 per cent behind the best-known compliance technique is one cell of five, and the evidence since has been weaker and less settled than the story told about a three-inch sign.
Answer to the question
Does the foot in the door technique work?
Sometimes, and by less than its legend suggests. A 1983 meta-analysis of 120 experimental groups called the effect replicable but weak, with nearly half of studies showing no effect or a reversal, and a direct replication run in 2003 and 2013 found it fading. The famous 76 per cent figure is one cell of one experiment.
Key takeaways
- Freedman and Fraser's 76 per cent (1966) is one cell of a five-condition experiment: 25 householders, against 24 in the control group at 16.7 per cent, with the other earlier-request conditions at 47.4 to 47.8 per cent and all experimental conditions together just over 55 per cent.
- A 1975 field experiment by Mark Snyder and a colleague found 52 per cent agreeing to a moderate request after a small yes, against 33 per cent for the control group and 22 per cent after a large request people were almost sure to refuse.
- A 1983 meta-analysis of 120 experimental groups called the effect replicable but weak, with nearly half of studies showing no effect or a reversal, and Dillard and colleagues (1984) found a small average effect that needed a prosocial request.
- Jerry Burger's 1999 review lists six processes that a foot in the door can set off, and a 1999 study with Tanya Chartrand found compliance fell when the same person asked again immediately.
- Dariusz Dolinski (2009) argues that one more small yes says little about a person who already faces six to fifteen requests a day, and a 2019 direct replication found the effect in Ukraine but not Poland in 2003, and in neither country in 2013.
A sign three inches wide asked drivers to be careful, and it sat in the front window of a house in Palo Alto. Two weeks later its owner was asked to put a billboard on the lawn. On the account in Influence, 76 per cent agreed, against 17 per cent of householders asked only once. That result is the usual first exhibit for the foot in the door technique.
The Case for the Technique at Full Strength
Start where a believer starts. Robert Cialdini gives the study two pages in Influence and builds a theory of the self on it. People who agree to something small, he argues, come to see themselves as the kind of person who agrees. The next request then arrives to a different audience. Small favours work through a separate rule, the one in [reciprocity at the sample tray](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/reciprocity-at-the-sample-tray). The proof offered is more than one sign. In a third condition the earlier act was a petition to keep California beautiful, a different topic altogether, and about half of those householders still took the billboard.
Cialdini adds a rule for which commitments bite. They should be active, public, effortful and freely chosen, and the last matters most, because a large reward or a threat buys compliance and leaves no change in self-image behind. He calls the result commitment that grows its own legs: the person finds fresh reasons, so removing the first inducement does not remove the behaviour. It is a tidy account. He also reports that people who score high on a Preference for Consistency scale, a measure from his own research group, were especially likely to comply when a request used the foot in the door or the low-ball technique, which he reads as support for the same mechanism.
The better news for believers on the foot in the door came nine years later. Mark Snyder and a colleague [reported a field experiment](https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076245) in which people who first agreed to a small request then agreed to a moderate one at about 52 per cent, against about 33 per cent for a control group. A third group was first given a large request they were almost certain to refuse, and they agreed at about 22 per cent, below the control. The pattern fits the self-image story neatly, since a yes lifts compliance and an impossible request lowers it, and it is the strongest single piece of support for the single-mechanism account.
The 76 per cent is real, and it is one cell.
What the Famous Number Actually Measures
The 76 per cent is real, and it is one cell. Freedman and Fraser ran five conditions in that experiment. The control group, contacted once with only the large request, agreed at 16.7 per cent (24 people). The group asked for the same small safe-driving sign, then the large one, agreed at 76 per cent (25 people in that one cell). The three conditions that changed the issue or the task landed between 47.4 and 47.8 per cent.
| Condition in Experiment II | Agreed to the billboard |
|---|---|
| One contact only (control) | 16.7 per cent |
| Small sign, same issue and task | 76 per cent |
| Other three earlier requests | 47.4 to 47.8 per cent |
| All experimental conditions together | just over 55 per cent |
Even where the earlier request concerned a different issue or a different task, agreement stayed near 47 per cent against 17 for the control group. The design of the foot in the door study therefore shows that an earlier contact raised later agreement, and the 76 per cent cell adds a further lift only where the two requests matched.
The same paper holds an earlier experiment that is often mixed up with the sign study. In it, householders were phoned with a survey about household soap and then asked to admit a survey crew for two hours, and 52.8 per cent agreed against 22.2 per cent in a control group.
Fifteen Years of Experiments Said Weak
Pool the foot in the door experiments and the picture loses contrast. A [1983 meta-analysis](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167283092002) covering the first fifteen years of research gathered 120 experimental groups, and its authors concluded that the effect is replicable but weak. Nearly half of the studies found no effect or an effect in the wrong direction. They also judged the self-perception explanation too imprecise to make clear predictions.
A [second synthesis](https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/sequentialrequest-persuasive-strategies-metaanalysis-of-footinthe/), published in 1984 by James Dillard and colleagues, found a small average effect, even under good conditions. The technique needed a prosocial topic to work, and delay between the requests made no difference. Whether an incentive came with the first request did matter. The effort relationship that self-perception predicts, more effort and so more compliance, did not appear, and the authors called the usual explanation seriously flawed.
Six Mechanisms and One Habitual Yes
If self-image is not the whole story, something else is operating. Jerry Burger's 1999 review in Personality and Social Psychology Review lists six candidates that a foot in the door manipulation can set off: self-perception, reactance, conformity, consistency, attributions and commitment. His argument is that they run together, which explains why the same procedure sometimes works, sometimes fails and occasionally cuts compliance.
That is a different claim from Cialdini's. One account offers a single lever with a single sign. The other offers several levers pulling in different directions, with the net result depending on how the requests are staged.
A study by Tanya Chartrand, Burger and a colleague shows the second reading at work. They varied whether the larger request came at once or two days later, and whether the same person made it. Compliance rose against the control in every condition but one. When the same requester asked again immediately, people agreed less often, and the technique backfired. A backfire of that kind fits [reactance](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/reactance-why-a-no-makes-you-want-it), the urge to push back against a request that feels like pressure, which a pure self-image account does not predict.
Dariusz Dolinski has made a sharper objection to the self-image theory. A person already says yes to many small requests every day, so one more is poor evidence about who they are. In [a 2009 paper](https://journals.pan.pl//Content/107617/PDF/41.pdf) he reports two small diary studies. Twelve female students logged every request they received over four days and recorded between six and fifteen a day, with average compliance of 76 per cent. Twelve students in a second study texted "Y" or "N" for each request over three days and sent about twelve messages a day, with "Y" making up 62 per cent.
These samples are tiny and the paper is an argument rather than a test. The argument is hard to dodge, though. If agreeing is a daily habit, a single sign in a window carries almost no new information about the person who put it there. Whether people see a request as a pitch at all is a separate question, taken up in [what spotting a sales pitch changes](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/why-a-sales-pitch-stops-working-once-you-spot-it).
What Survives, and What Cialdini Can Still Claim
Dolinski and a colleague went back to Freedman and Fraser's design and ran it as a direct replication in Poland and Ukraine, in 2003 and again in 2013, in a 2019 paper in Psychological Reports. In 2003 the foot in the door worked in Ukraine and not in Poland. In 2013 the effect was not significant in either country, and compliance fell over time. The authors attribute the pattern to the procedure's high ecological validity.
Taken together, the evidence on the foot in the door supports a modest effect with several causes. A small prior yes can raise later agreement, mostly for prosocial requests, and by amounts closer to the 47 per cent cells than to 76. The self-image story explains part of it. Burger's multi-process account fits the failures better, and Dolinski's objection fits the self-image story worst. The headline figure should be read as one cell in one experiment, not as a rate.
Cialdini keeps one fair point. His chapter never claimed that any small yes works, only that a commitment which is active, public, effortful and freely chosen does, and that a large reward undermines it. One of the conditions the 1984 meta-analysis found to matter, whether an incentive came with the first request, is the kind of condition his account says should matter. His theory stands, but its evidence moves from the single headline cell to the moderators found in the later syntheses.
Common questions
Does the foot in the door technique work?
Sometimes, and by less than its legend suggests. A 1983 meta-analysis of 120 experimental groups found the effect replicable but weak, with nearly half of studies showing no effect or a reversal. A 1984 meta-analysis found a small average effect, one that needed a prosocial request. Repeating Freedman and Fraser's design in 2003 and 2013 produced mixed and then null results.
What is the foot in the door technique?
It is a two-step request. A person is asked for something small and agrees, and later a larger request follows. The claim is that the first yes raises the chance of a second. Freedman and Fraser tested it in 1966, and Cialdini popularised it in Influence as an example of commitment and consistency.
Is the 76 per cent figure reliable?
As a rate for the foot in the door it misleads: it is accurate for one condition of one experiment, with 25 people. The control group, 24 people, agreed at 16.7 per cent, and the other earlier-request conditions agreed at about 47 per cent. Across all experimental conditions, compliance was just over 55 per cent.
Sources
Cialdini, R. B. (2021). Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Harper Business, Chapter 7, pp. 291-362.
Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966). 'Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195-202. doi:10.1037/h0023552
Snyder, M., & Cunningham, M. R. (1975). 'To comply or not comply: Testing the self-perception explanation of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(1), 64-67. doi:10.1037/h0076245.
Beaman, A. L., Cole, C. M., Preston, M., Klentz, B., & Steblay, N. M. (1983). 'Fifteen years of foot-in-the-door research: A meta-analysis.' Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9(2), 181-196. doi:10.1177/0146167283092002.
Dillard, J. P., Hunter, J. E., & Burgoon, M. (1984). 'Sequential-request persuasive strategies: Meta-analysis of foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face.' Human Communication Research, 10(4), 461-488.
Burger, J. M. (1999). 'The foot-in-the-door compliance procedure: A multiple-process analysis and review.' Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(4), 303-325.
Chartrand, T., Pinckert, S., & Burger, J. M. (1999). 'When manipulation backfires: The effects of time delay and requester on the foot-in-the-door technique.' Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(1), 211-221.
Dolinski, D. (2009). 'People in a freezer: Self-perception as an explanatory mechanism for the effectiveness of the foot-in-the-door technique.' Polish Psychological Bulletin, 40(3), 113-116.
Gamian-Wilk, M., & Dolinski, D. (2019). 'The foot-in-the-door phenomenon 40 and 50 years later: A direct replication of the original Freedman and Fraser study in Poland and in Ukraine.' Psychological Reports.