A general rule of persuasion is that whenever someone does something to us that we perceive as a favor, we will feel a strong obligation to want to return the favor.
In psychology, this is known as the reciprocity principle.
But there’s an even more interesting variation of the reciprocity principle known as “reciprocal concessions.”
Reciprocal concessions is when someone who is making a request starts at a certain position but then lowers his/her initial request, making the respondent more likely to agree to their second request.
|•According to research, when someone makes a concession for us by reducing the size of their original request, we’ll tend to view it as a favor and will feel a psychological obligation to make a concession of our own as well.|
In the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” the number one cited social psychologist Robert Cialdini wanted to test this idea out himself so Cialdini and a team of researchers decided to randomly approach college students on campus and ask them if they’d be willing to serve as unpaid chaperones for a group of juvenile delinquents on a day trip to the zoo.
As expected, 83% of college students who were approached refused the researcher’s request.
However, the researchers then tried a slightly different approach. Before making the earlier request, the researchers first asked the college students for a commitment that required much more effort on their part. They asked whether they’d be willing to serve as unpaid counsellors for two hours a week for a minimum of two years at the local juvenile detention center.
|Of course, the college students refused every time. But once the request was refused, the earlier request of serving as an unpaid chaperone for a day trip was then put forward.
Amazingly, the percentage of college students now agreeing to the request shot up from 17% to 50%.
Simply by retreating and reducing the enormity of their request, the researchers were able to significantly increase people’s likelihood of agreeing to a certain request.
This research suggests that whenever you’re in a situation where you’re going to be asking someone for something, it would be smart of you to first make a larger request.
Then, after your larger request is turned down, you make the smaller request that you were initially interested in requesting all along.
Given that you’ve structured your requests skillfully, the person you’re asking for a favor should view your second request as a concession and should feel inclined to respond with a concession of their own by agreeing to your smaller request.