Dennis T. Regan

Who they are

The 1971 paper gives Regan's affiliation as Cornell University. This page records only what the paper states. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.

Key papers

Effects of a favor and liking on compliance (1971). Participants were 81 first-year men at Stanford University, four of whom were excluded. Each rated paintings alongside a confederate, a man posing as a fellow participant. The design crossed three favour conditions with a manipulation of how pleasant the confederate was. In one condition the confederate brought the participant a Coke during a break; in another the experimenter provided it; in a third there was no drink. Later the confederate asked the participant to buy raffle tickets at 25 cents each. Those given a Coke by the confederate bought 1.73 tickets on average, against 1.08 when the experimenter supplied it and 0.92 with no favour.

Key ideas

Regan also measured how much participants liked the confederate. Across all participants, liking predicted how many tickets they bought, but among those who had received the confederate's Coke the relationship was weak and not statistically reliable. The favour also increased liking. Regan concluded that the relationship between favours and compliance appeared to be "mediated, not by liking for the favor-doer, but by normative pressure to reciprocate."

The study is the main laboratory source for the claim, popularised by Robert Cialdini's Influence, that the pull to repay a favour can work whatever you think of the giver.

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