Revisiting the "Door in the Face"

Two reasons this persuasion technique works so well.

“Any communication in which you want agreement, influence, action, referrals, or satisfaction is a negotiation. The commodities of negotiation are information, time, money, cooperation, and happiness—specifically, your happiness.”

—Chris Voss

You’ll recall that in our last post, we discussed the “door-in-the-face” (DITF) technique of influence that Professor Robert Cialdini has pioneered: To get a person to do something as you’d like, first make a larger request; when the person rejects the (arguably) excessive request, follow with your true, lesser request, and the person will be more apt to comply.

You need a ride to your mechanic a mile up the road. First, you strategically ask a colleague to take you to the airport at rush hour on a Friday afternoon, perhaps even anticipating her polite rejection. Next, when your colleague demurs, you then inquire if she wouldn’t mind just giving you a lift to the nearby garage. Off the hook to make an airport run, how can your colleague deny you a t…