When Death Is Compelling: Door-in-the-Face Compliance Under Mortality Salience
Abstract
Research on terror management theory has found evidence that people under mortality salience strive to live up to activated social norms and values. Recently, research has shown that mortality salience also increases adherence to the norm of reciprocity. Based on this, in the current paper we investigated the idea that mortality salience influences persuasion strategies that are based on the norm of reciprocity. We therefore assume that mortality salience should enhance compliance for a request when using the door-in-the-face technique – a persuasion strategy grounded in the norm of reciprocity. In a hypothetical scenario (Study 1), and in a field experiment (Study 2), applying the door-in-the-face technique enhanced compliance in the mortality salience condition compared to a control group.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Only in the door-in-the-face condition MS led to a higher purchase intention compared to control.
“only in the door- in- the- face condition MS led to a higher purchase intention compared to control.”
From Terror Management Theory in the Consumer Domain: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis on Mortality Salience Driven Consumer Responses (2025) · cites this paper as Schindler and Reinhard (2015, Study 1)
Cites
Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique.
Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0023552 · Cited by 1,637 · see citing works
Two Decades of Terror Management Theory: A Meta-Analysis of Mortality Salience Research
Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1177/1088868309352321 · Cited by 1,188 · see citing works
A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: When Norms Do and Do not Affect Behavior
Kallgren, C. A., Reno, R. R., & Cialdini, R. B. (2000) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/01461672002610009 · Cited by 1,005 · see citing works
Why Do We Need What We Need? A Terror Management Perspective on the Roots of Human Social Motivation
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1997) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1207/s15327965pli0801_1 · Cited by 497 · see citing works
The Scrooge Effect: Evidence that mortality salience increases prosocial attitudes and behavior
Jonas, E., Schimel, J., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2002) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/014616702236834 · Cited by 420 · see citing works
Jonas, E., Martens, A., Niesta Kayser, D., Fritsche, I., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2008) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0013593 · Cited by 189 · see citing works
Mortality salience increases adherence to salient norms and values
Gailliot, M. T., Stillman, T. F., Schmeichel, B. J., Maner, J. K., & Plant, E. A. (2008) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167208316791 · Cited by 174 · see citing works
Jonas, E., Sullivan, D., & Greenberg, J. (2013) · Journal of Economic Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.joep.2012.12.005 · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Tit for tat in the face of death: The effect of mortality salience on reciprocal behavior
Schindler, S., Reinhard, M.-A., & Stahlberg, D. (2013) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.06.002 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Defending one's worldview under mortality salience: Testing the validity of an established idea
Schindler, S., Reinhardt, N., & Reinhard, M.-A. (2021) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104087 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Self-citationSchindler, S., Hilgard, J., Fritsche, I., Burke, B., & Pfattheicher, S. (2023) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1177/10888683221107267 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
“…providing evidence for the idea regarding various additional social norms, such as helping and responsibility (Gailliot et al., 2008), honesty (Schindler & Reinhard, 2015a; Schindler, Reinhard, et al., 2019), modesty (Du & Jonas, 2015), justice and fairness (Hirschberger et al., 2016; Jonas…”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationArendsen, J. L., Brugman, B. C., van Koningsbruggen, G. M., & Fransen, M. L. (2025) · International Journal of Consumer Studies · doi:10.1111/ijcs.70056 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
- Authors
- Schindler, S., & Reinhard, M.-A.
- Affiliations
- University of Kassel (DE)
- Venue
- Social Psychology
- Publisher
- Hogrefe Publishing Group
- Published
- 2015-11
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 352-360
- ISSN
- 1864-9335 (ISSN-L)
- 2151-2590
- OpenAlex
- W2230316601
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 2.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Psychology of Social Influence
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning
- Keywords
- mortality salience, terror management theory, reciprocity norms, door-in-the-face technique, persuasion techniques, compliance, social norms
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
