Does social psychology persist over half a century? A direct replication of Cialdini et al.’s (1975) classic door-in-the-face technique.

Abstract

Many failed replications in social psychology have cast doubt on the validity of the field. Most of these replication attempts have focused on findings published from the 1990s on, ignoring a large body of older literature. As some scholars suggest that social psychological findings and theories are limited to a particular time, place, and population, we sought to test whether a classical social psychological finding that was published nearly half a century ago can be successfully replicated in another country on another continent. To this end, we directly replicated Cialdini et al.'s (1975) door-in-the-face (DITF) technique according to which people's likelihood to comply with a target request increases after having turned down a larger request. Thereby, we put the reciprocal concessions theorythe original process explanation of the DITF technique-to a critical test. Overall, compliance rates in our replication were similarly high as those Cialdini et al. (1975) found 45 years ago. That is, participants were more likely to comply with a target request after turning down an extreme request than participants who were exposed to the target request only or to a similarly small request before being exposed to the target request. These findings support the idea that reciprocity norms play a crucial role in DITF strategies. Moreover, the results suggest that at least some social psychological findings can transcend a particular time, place, and population. Further theoretical implications are discussed.

Belief in free will and victim blaming

“…Past research on studying psychological motives behind victim blaming indicated that fundamentalistic religious worldviews (Sheldon & Parent, 2002), a conservatism attitude (Lambert & Raichle, 2000;Williams, 1984), and just world beliefs (e.g., Strömwall et al, 2013;Van den Bos & Maas, 2009) contribute to victim blaming. In Study 3, we replicated these findings-a fact noteworthy in light of the current debate on the crises of confidence in psychological science (e.g., Genschow, Westfal, et al, 2020;Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Moreover, our research extends past findings by demonstrating that belief in free will explains variance in predicting victim blaming in addition to other relevant predictors such as religiosity, political attitudes and just world beliefs.…”

Manipulating belief in free will and its downstream consequences: A meta-analysis

“…For example, an interesting finding is that anti-free will manipulations appeared to have stronger effects in the US than in Europe. In line with a recent call for crosscultural replications in social psychology (Genschow, Westfal, et al, 2020), future research may explore in more detail the influence of the manipulation on different continents and cultures.…”

A Lost Idea in Psychology: Observation as Starting Point for the Scientific Investigation of Human Behavior

“…A contrario, real cases of accidents that have caused brain damage in individuals have stimulated neuropsychological explorations of the functions of different parts of the brain (e.g., Macmillan, 2000), often well before any theory or experimentation in healthy individuals. In social psychology, it is the systematic observation of a sectarian drift that allowed Festinger to create the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1956), and that of particularly gifted salesmen allowed Cialdini to initiate the exploration of the principles of social influence, with recent successful replications (Genschow et al, 2021).…”