9 Psychological Effects You Can Turn To Your Advantage

9. Foot In The Door

Okay, Manipulation 101: How to get people to do favours for you. There are two similar approaches: The "foot in the door" and the "door in the face" (or, if you get it very wrong, the "foot in the face"). The "door in the face" approach says that somebody will be more likely to do you a smaller favour, if they have previously refused to do a bigger one. If, for example, you ask to borrow £50, they're likely to say no, but they're more likely to then lend you a fiver as it seems like the better option, plus they might feel bad about having previously rejected you. The "foot in the door" phenomenon is essentially the reverse of this. With this strategy, a person is more likely to do you a bigger favour if they've already done you a smaller one. You have to ramp it up gradually, you can just go from "can I borrow a pencil?" to "help me hide this body", but you could well get there in the end.