Episode 74: Social Influence in a Virtual World – A Virtual Door in the Face

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The Foot in the Door and the Door in the Face are two classic social influence techniques that have been heavily studied by psychologists. However, until now, no one has attempted them in a virtual world. Join me for this fascinating conversation with Paul Eastwick, who along with Dr. Wendy Gardner from Northwestern University ventured into There.com to see if these very effective real-world techniques were equally effective on avatars.

You can find the published article here: Eastwick, P. W. and Gardner, W. L. (2008). Is it a game? Evidence for social influence in the virtual world. Social Influence.
The research was conducted in There.com
Here is Paul Eastwick’s homepage.
Here is Wendi Gardner’s web page.
The researcher who has done a lot virtual world research is Nick Yee, so you might want to check out his work as well.
Here is the link to the article Paul mentioned which appeared in the New York Times called Reality Without The Downside by Michael Marriott.
Here’s a brief description of the conditions in this experiment:

In all conditions, the experimenter’s avatar initiated the interaction by saying: ‘‘Hi, I’m doing a photo scavenger hunt.’’

Control condition: the experimenter then made the moderate request: ‘‘Would you teleport to Duda Beach with me and let me take a screenshot of you?’’

Foot-in-the-door condition: a small request was made before the moderate request: ‘‘Can I take a screenshot of you?’’.

Door-in-the-face condition: a large request was made before the moderate request: ‘‘I need to take a screenshot of someone in 50 different locations. It’s supposed to take about 2 hours of teleporting and traveling. Would you do it?’’.

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Ellen 12.17.08 at 3:13 pm: This is something I was just curious about. Did people ever say no to the screenshot when it was the first request, or yes to the 2 hour request when it was the first request?
Michael Britt 01.02.09 at 4:27 am: Good question. I found out that no one ever said no to the first request (”can I take a screenshot?”) and no one ever said yes to the 2 hour request. If I was asked those questions I doubt I would say no to the first or yes to the second.

Thanks for the question Ellen!

Michael