[Music] have you ever been to the mall or a shopping center and you see those carts with the very aggressive salespeople as you walk by they'll scream excuse me sir or ma'am could I ask you a question now you're generally the kind of person who allows other people to ask them a question so you say sure and they'll ask you something like how do you think you would look in hair extensions or have you ever thought about buying a time share and they got you this is known as the foot in the door technique and it works extremely well basically the way it works is somebody will ask you for a small favor or a small request and then subsequently ask you for a larger favor or a larger request and if you agree to the first smaller request or favor you will be more likely to comply with their larger request later on in 1966 two researchers Jonathan fredman and Scott Fraser decided to test this technique to see if it was real and there was some real science behind it in experiment one the researchers contacted 156 women who were at home during the workday they divided this group of 156 women into four smaller groups three of which they called by telephone and asked a question the question was can you tell me what kind of products you are using what kind of household products soaps and so forth they made note of those who complied and thank them for their time now 3 days later the researchers called upon the same three groups of women plus the fourth group with whom they had no contact up until this point this time they asked a very different question they asked a pretty large request they asked the women if it was okay if they could send somebody to their homes during the day to have them catalog what kind of product they use basically rans sack their kitchen cabinets and here's what the researchers found out of the first three groups that were asked the smaller request 52.8% of those women agreed to let a complete stranger in their home to go through their cabinets and catalog the different products they're using now this fourth group of women with whom the researchers had no contact up until this point only 22.2% of these women agreed to the larger request and that was to let somebody in their house to go through their cabinets there was a significant difference between these two groups showing that asking a small favor at first certainly paves the way for agreement for a much larger favor later on in experiment number two the researchers decided to change it up a little bit this time they contacted 112 men and women seven men were actually home at the time so they included them in the study as well like the first study they took this group of 12 men and women and divided them into four different groups they went to the homes of the first three groups of subjects knocked on the door and asked them if they would be so kind as to put a small sign in their window or in the window of their car that either promoted safe driving or keeping California clean about 2 weeks later the researchers went back to the first three groups plus the fourth group with whom they had no contact and they asked a large request they asked them to put large pretty unattractive billboard in their yard promoting either safe driving or keeping California beautiful now the researchers wanted to know if it was the message itself that was influencing the participants to put the larger billboard in their yard so for example if the participants at first agreed to a small sign about traffic safety would it matter if they were asked to put a large billboard about keeping California beautiful and they found that no it did not there was no difference whatsoever so it wasn't about the message it was about complying the researchers finally concluded that what was going on was a change in the person's feelings about becoming the kind of person who actually complies with these kind of requests once the person agreed to a small request they had a new self-image they had the self-image of being the kind of person that agrees with these kind of requests this technique has implications in many areas of life specifically sales marketing and even politics now that you are aware of this technique you could be more Vigilant when somebody tries to use this technique on you the next time you're walking through the mall and somebody says excuse me sir or ma'am can I ask you a question just smile keep walking look at them and say you just did [Music]