Legitimizing Paltry Contribution

The study “Increasing Compliance by Legitimizing Paltry Contributions: When Even a Penny Helps” researches compliance as it relates to the favors being asked. The researchers predict that easiest way to gain compliance is to ask for small favors because people feel that they cannot say no. The purpose of the research was to test if minimal requests would make participants more likely to say yes, and if starting with a small request can influence someone to help with a larger, more fulfilling request. This study uses two different experiments to test their hypothesis. The first experiment used 84 people from suburban neighborhoods. They then had groups of mixed genders of college students go door to door to ask for donations for the American

The researchers used a larger sample size, 169 adults in suburban neighborhoods, to get a better representation. Experiment two used new college students to go door to door to keep the experiment somewhat blind. The control statement was, “We've already received some contributions, and I wonder if you would be willing to help by giving a donation”. So every treatment used this statement and then a statement would be added. Three of the conditions used were, “Even a penny will help”, “Even a dollar will help”, and “We’ve already received some contributions, ranging from a penny on up, and I wonder if you would be willing to help by giving a donation” (the social legitimization condition). Each treatment was measured for different variables. The last condition was put in place because the researchers thought that an alternate explanation might be a main factor for donations. Since the questions says “even a penny will help” it was thought that it may sound as if the American Cancer Association was in desperate need of money; so in turn a survey was given to 46 of adults that questioned how much these participants thought that certain charities needed money, especially focusing the American Cancer Association. The variables measured in this experiment were: percent of adults who gave donations, total amount given, and mean need of money score (from the

It also displayed that the “penny” statement almost doubled the control. The treatment statement had 50% of people contribute money whereas the control only had 28.6%, and the mean amount of money given between both conditions was about one dollar. The results of the second experiment presented that there was not much of a difference in the survey of need scores, meaning that this alternate explanation probably did not play a factor in the people giving donations. The only significant test was the test of the combination of the penny and the social legitimization condition, and it was strongly more significant than the test of the control and the dollar combination. Since the researchers did not hypothesize this, both of the hypotheses for this particular experiment were not supported. However the overall hypothesis, if asking for small requests will gain more compliance, was supported. In both conditions the “even a penny” statement gained the most amount of adult