Page 219 - The Social Animal

Self-Justification 201

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Fraser. They attempted to induce several homeowners to put up a
huge sign in their front yards reading “Drive Carefully.” Because of
the ugliness and obtrusiveness of this sign, most residents refused to
put it up; only 17 percent complied. A different group of residents,
however, was first “softened up” by an experimenter who got them to
sign a petition favoring safe driving. Because signing a petition is an
easy thing to do, virtually all who were asked agreed to sign. A few
weeks later, a different experimenter went to each resident with the
obtrusive, ugly sign reading “Drive Carefully.” More than 55 percent
of these residents allowed the sign to be put up on their property.
Thus, when individuals commit themselves in a small way, the like-
lihood that they will commit themselves further in that direction is
increased. This process of using small favors to encourage people to
accede to larger requests had been dubbed the foot-in-the-door
technique. It is effective because having done the smaller favor sets
up pressure toward agreeing to do the larger favor; in effect, it pro-
vides justification in advance for complying with the large request.
Similar results were obtained by Patricia Pliner and her associ-
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ates. These investigators found that 46 percent of their sample were
willing to make a small donation to the American Cancer Society
when they were approached directly. A similar group of people were
asked 1 day earlier to wear a lapel pin publicizing the fund-raising
drive. When approached the next day, approximately twice as many
of these people were willing to make a contribution.
Think back to Stanley Milgram’s classic experiments on obedi-
ence discussed in Chapter 2. Suppose that, at the very beginning of
the experiment, Milgram had instructed his participants to deliver a
shock of 450 volts. Do you think many people would have obeyed?
Probably not. My guess is that, in a sense, the mild shocks near the
beginning of the experiment served as a foot-in-the-door induction
to Milgram’s participants. Because the increases in shock level are
gradual, the participant is engaged in a series of self-justifications. If
you are the participant, once you have justified step one, that justifi-
cation makes it easier to go to step two; once you justify step two, it
is easier to go to step three; and so on. By the time you get to 450
volts, well, heck, that’s not much different from 435 volts, is it? In
other words, once individuals start down that slippery slope of self-
justification, it becomes increasingly difficult to draw a line in the
sand—because in effect, they end up asking themselves, “Why draw
the line here if I didn’t draw it 15 volts ago?”