In my article "The Need for Psychology Understanding,” I discussed how fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. One such psychological concept is psychological sales techniques. Psychological sales techniques can be used by a character to convince a character to buy something, perform a favor, or to convince a character to do something.

There are many sales techniques utilized to convince a person to purchase or agree to something that they normally would not. Two of these techniques are known as the foot in the door and door in the face techniques. Both techniques are commonly used to get a person to make the decision that the person using the technique wants the person to make. These techniques could be used by a salesperson looking to sell a car or a person looking to get a loan from a friend.

The foot in the door persuasion technique is based on the idea that once someone has agreed to a small request, he or she is then more likely to comply with a larger request (Freedman, & Fraser, 1966). This persuasion method is supposed to produce compliance without much in the way of apparent pressure being placed on the person the method is used on (Freedman, & Fraser, 1966). This technique is often utilized in marketing subscription services where the customer is brought in with a low price and then later receives a letter about a price increase or that their special sign-up price has ended and there is a new price for the service. In this situation, since the person is already using the service, they are more likely to continue to use it even with the price increase. A more personal example would be if an individual asked a friend for a small loan and then came back and asked for a larger loan a few weeks later. In this situation, since the friend had agreed to the smaller loan, they are more likely to agree to the larger one.

The door in the face persuasion technique is when a person asks for an extreme favor that is refused and then for a smaller favor (Cialdini et al., 1975). An example of this technique is when in Cialdini’s et al. (1975) research study, the subjects were first asked to be unpaid counselors at the County Juvenile Detention Center for two years as the extreme favor, then asked to be an unpaid chaperone for a zoo trip for two hours. In this example, no participant agreed to the extreme favor, but 50% agreed to the smaller favor. A sales example would be if a salesperson first showed a potential buyer the most expensive version of the product that they were interested in and then showed a less expensive version of the item. In this example, the person would refuse the expensive item, but then be more likely to purchase the less expensive option.

References

Cialdini, R. B., Vincent, J. E., Lewis, S. K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B. L. (1975).

Reciprocal Concessions Procedure for Inducing Compliance: The Door-in-the-Face Technique. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 31(2), 206–215. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1037/h0076284

Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966). Compliance without Pressure: The Foot-In-The-Door

Technique. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 4(2), 195–202. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1037/h0023552