[4] In a classic experiment investigating the effectiveness of the DITF technique, researchers separated participants into three groups.
[1] In group 1, experimenters asked participants to volunteer to counsel juvenile delinquents for two hours a week for two years (large request).
After their refusal, the group was asked to chaperone juvenile delinquents on a one-day trip to the zoo (small request).
[1] A 2020 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology replicated the findings of Cialdini's original 1975 experiment.
[7] The social responsibility explanation involves internal standards of the importance of helping others that make the respondent feel they must comply to the second smaller request.
[6] Other explanations of the DITF effect involve maintaining a positive self-presentation and reducing guilt.
The DITF scenarios used in both studies were taken from previous research and shown to be very effective in influencing compliance.
Overall, findings indicate that participants felt DITF interactions were more closely related to helping than bargaining.
[8] Another study comparing reciprocal concessions with social responsibility found neither explanation to be sufficient.
[9] The researcher explains the results as evidence for the importance of self-presentation when friends use the DITF technique.
[9] Research on the influence of guilt indicates that it plays an important role in the effectiveness of the DITF technique.
This is important because the DITF technique often involves strangers making extreme requests, which might elicit a response that requires metacommunication.
The researchers suggest that the explicit statement regarding social boundaries makes participants comply to avoid engaging in metacommunicative conflict.
[11] Research investigating reverse psychology showed that participants used the DITF technique in their everyday lives.
There were two studies that looked at participants' own experiences using reverse psychology, which these researchers refer to as strategic self-anticonformity.
The second study asked about specific instances of different types of strategic self-anti-conformity, like DITF and FITD.
Findings indicate that most of the participants could provide examples of their own use of reverse psychology tactics and that a likely explanation for this is a need for social reassurance.
[12] A study looking at behavioral, not just verbal, compliance to donate money found that the DITF technique was effective.
[13] A study looking at the DITF technique in retail found that it was very effective in increasing sales.
[14] In this study the experimenter sold cheese to people walking past a hut in the Austrian Alps.
[14] Researchers investigated the DITF technique in a restaurant setting and found that it is effective if there is no delay between the first and second requests.
[15] Waitresses were instructed to ask randomly selected restaurant patrons whether they wanted dessert at the end of their meals.
The researchers looked at compliance as well as students' mathematical ability, quality of work, and amount of help needed.
Results show that the DITF technique was effective in increasing compliance rates compared to the FITD and control conditions.
In the control condition, the homepage asked for donations and redirected participants to a page with a picture and several links to outside charitable organizations.
The link redirected participants to a page that asked them to spend several hours a week finding people to donate to the site.
In the DITF condition, the experimenter approached another user's avatar and asked for a moderate request, which involved taking a screenshot of 50 different locations.
These three studies provide evidence to support the effectiveness of the FITD technique because it increased compliance in all three experiments.
The researcher suggests that the FITD technique may be preferable to DITF because it does not place as much pressure on people to comply.