The Foot in the Door Phenomenon

The Foot in the Door Phenomenon

Theory

The foot in the door phenomenon, or as Gass and Seiter (2011) put it, “The ‘give me an inch and I’ll take a mile’ tactic” is a means to gain compliance that entails a small request while waiting to make a larger request. It is not uncommon for these two requests to have nothing to do with eachother. According to Gass and Seiter (2011), “When people comply with a smaller request, it often makes them more likely to comply with a second, larger request.” The most prevalent explanation for the effectiveness of the foot in the door strategy is based on the self-perception theory (Gass & Seiter, 2011). According to the theory, people become familiar with others attitudes, psychological reactions, and other internal reactions by inferring them from the behavior they themselves exhibit. According to Gass and Seiter, “As an explanation for the FITD effect, self-perception theory says this: When you agree to comply with a small request, you see yourself as an altruistic person who is likely to help.”

Event

One area where this has become a problem is with the recent breakdown in talks between republicans and democrats with regard to how handle spending cuts. However, the problem is that many of the inches that were given by either side were never followed up with the mile. One side would try to get more out of the deal, and the talks would come to an end, with the inches being retracted (Killough, 2013)

The effectiveness of the foot in the door tactic depends largely on how it is approached. For example, if the size of the initial request is too small the following larger request will seem like too large a jump and put off the receiver. If the size of the initial request is too large, the initial request may be denied and this defeats the whole concept of foot in the door theory.

References

Gass, R. H. & Seiter, J. S., (2011). Persuasion: Social influence and compliance gaining. 4^th Edition. Allyn & Bacon.

Myers, D. (2013). Social psychology. (eleventh ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Killough, A. (2013, Feb. 26.) Obama: Cuts are a 'self-inflicted wound'.CNN http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/26/obama-cuts-are-a-self-inflicted-wound/?iref=allsearch