The Low-Ball Compliance Technique: Task or Person Commitment?

Three experiments were conducted to examine the mediating process involved in the low-ball procedure for increasing compliance. In Experiment 1, subjects who agreed to but were not allowed to perform an initial request complied with a more costly version of the same request to a greater extent than did controls only when the second request came from the same person as did the first request and not when it came from a different person. In Experiment 2, subjects who agreed to but were not allowed to carry out an initial low-cost request complied with a larger request from the same person to the same extent, whether the first request was related or unrelated to the second. In Experiment 3, subjects were allowed or not allowed to perform an initial small request after agreeing to do so. Later, these subjects were approached by either the same or a different person with a larger second request. All groups showed increased compliance over a control cell. However, subjects not allowed to perform the initial request who were approached by the same person for the second request showed a higher rate of compliance than subjects in the other experimental conditions. The results from the three experiments suggest that an unfulfilled obligation to the requester, rather than a commitment to the initial target behavior, is responsible for the effectiveness of the low-ball technique.