Abstract
The evoking freedom technique is a verbal compliance technique that consists of soliciting someone to comply with a request by simply saying that the solicitee is free to accept or refuse the request. The effect of this technique on customer behavior has never been tested, however. When presenting the menu to a patron, a waitress was instructed to suggest a dish. In half of the cases, when making this suggestion, the employee added that the patron was free to choose a different dish. Results showed that compared to a control condition, the suggestion associated with the evoking freedom technique had a positive effect on the patron’s choice. The magnitude and the generalization of this technique are discussed.
Many techniques exist in social psychology literature to obtain compliance with a request that is addressed to somebody by an unknown solicitor (see Pratkanis, 2007, for a review). One of these techniques, called the evoking freedom technique, is a verbal compliance procedure that consists of soliciting someone to comply with a request by simply telling a person that he or she is free to accept or refuse the request. In the first study published on this technique, Guéguen and Pascual (2000) asked passersby in a street to give them money. In the experimental condition, their request ended with the phrase “but you are free to accept or to refuse,” whereas this phrase was not used in the control condition. They found that 10% of the participants who were solicited complied with the request in the control condition, whereas 47.5% accepted in the experimental condition. Recently, Guéguen et al. (2013) found that this technique appeared to be effective in increasing the number of people who agreed to give money to a requester, the number of smokers who agreed to give a cigarette, and passersby who agreed to respond to a survey.
Theoretically, the evoking freedom technique could be explained in two ways. Kiesler and Sakumura (1966) and Kiesler (1971) stated that to obtain commitment from someone to perform an expected act, it is necessary to increase the degree of commitment. According to these authors, there are several ways to increase commitment, but one of the most important is to increase the degree of volition perceived by the individual in performing the expected behavior. Therefore, stating that someone is free to comply could increase this degree of volition, which, in turn, would lead him or her to comply more favorably. In contrast with the degree of volition and commitment, psychological reactance is also used to explain the effect of the evoking freedom technique. Reactance occurs when someone perceives that his or her freedom of behavior is threatened or restricted. Reactance is aroused by various factors: social pressure to act, financial incentives to comply, and physical dominance. According to Brehm (1966) and Brehm and Brehm (1981), reactance creates a negative tension state that motivates the individual to act to restore the threatened freedom. So, perhaps, when someone is solicited to help another person, the solicitation itself can create an aversive tension that, in turn, could decrease the likelihood of compliance. By using the “but you are free …” phrase, however, the feeling that one’s freedom of behavior is threatened or restricted would not occur or would be marginal. Without such an aversive feeling, a higher likelihood of compliance would be obtained.
In all of the studies that have tested the evoking freedom technique, the requests used were strictly prosocial, that is, most of the requests were helping requests or altruistic requests addressed by charitable organizations. The objective of the present study was to test the effect of the evoking freedom technique on an employee’s food suggestion in a restaurant. Given the positive effect of this technique on compliance to a request, we hypothesized that patrons in a restaurant would agree more favorably to a dish suggested by an employee who added that the patron was free to accept or not accept the suggestion.
Method
Participants
Sixty restaurant customers (26 males and 34 females) who acted as participants were randomly assigned to two groups. All of them were seated at a table in a crepe restaurant in a very attractive spot in the medium-sized city of Vannes (more than 70,000 inhabitants), which is located in the west of France on the Breton Atlantic Coast.
Procedure
One waitress, a regular employee of the restaurant, acted as the confederate in this experiment and selected the patron to participate in the experiment when he or she entered the restaurant. If a table was free or if the patron had reserved a table, the waitress invited the customer to sit down. After he or she was seated, the employee said, “I’ll bring the menu right away. Would you like a cocktail first?” The waitress waited until the customer gave his or her response and then the employee left the table. About 1 to 3 minutes later, the waitress came back to the table with the menu and the cocktail if the patron had ordered one. Then the employee said, “Here is the menu, Sir [or Madam].” According to a random distribution, the waitress suggested a dish in two ways. In the evoking freedom condition, the employee said to the customer with a smile, “Today, I recommend our crepe of the day, the ‘crêpe forestière’ [crepe filled with ham, cheese, egg, and mushrooms], which is particularly delicious. But of course, you are free to choose something else.” In the control condition, the evoking freedom sentence (“But of course, you are free to choose something else”) was not included in the verbal suggestion made by the waitress. In both conditions, the employee said, “I’ll let you look at the menu,” and then left the customer’s table. After 5 to 7 minutes, she returned to the customer’s table and asked him or her if he or she had made a choice. If the response was positive, the employee noted the customer’s choice. If not, the employee left the table for 5 minutes and returned to take the customer’s order. During these various interactions between the employee and the customer, no further suggestions were made to the customer, and the waitress was instructed to act in her usual manner with all of the customers.
Results
One dependent variable was measured in this experiment: the customer’s compliance to the waitress’s suggestion. Preliminary data analysis was conducted for male patrons and experimental treatments and female patrons and experimental treatments. Because no difference was found between males and females, their data were combined.
In the evoking freedom condition, 46.7% (14/30) of the customers took the employee’s suggestion, whereas 10.0% (3/30) took the suggestion in the control condition. The difference between the two experimental conditions was statistically significant (χ²(1, N = 60) = 9.93, p = .002, φ =.38).
Discussion
Congruent with previous studies on the evoking freedom technique (Guéguen et al., 2013; Guéguen & Pascual, 2002), we observed that this technique appeared effective to influence customer behavior. In this study, it was found that patrons took the employee’s suggestion more favorably when she added a short sentence that suggested that the patron was free to order something else. This experiment seems to show that the evoking freedom technique is effective in requests other than solicitations for help or altruistic behavior, and the new data confirm the powerful effect that this technique has on various types of solicitations. The magnitude of the effect size of the difference found in our experiment appeared higher than the average effect size (.13) found in the recent meta-analysis of Carpenter (2013). Carpenter found, however, that the effectiveness of this technique was significantly more important when the experimenter was present (as in our experiment) than when he or she was not (e.g., in a request addressed by mail or e-mail). Thus, these new data seem to show the robustness of the evoking freedom technique to gain compliance to a request and the generalization of this technique to a wide range of requests, including customer behavior as was found in our experiment.
Such results have some managerial implications. The evoking freedom technique appears to be an effective technique to influence customers’ choices in a restaurant. This technique is very easy for employees to perform. Thus, restaurant managers should encourage their employees to use this technique when suggesting a dish to their patrons.
This study has a number of limitations. The sample size was low (N = 60). The magnitude of the effect size, however, seems to show that the evoking freedom technique is really effective. In this experiment, the employee was a woman, which could have influenced customer behavior in the experimental condition. The waitress was instructed to act in the same way in both experimental and control conditions. She may have unconsciously behaved differently, however, which in turn influenced the customers’ choices. Thus, replications of this study using larger sample sizes and employees of both sexes are now necessary.
Footnotes
Nicolas Guéguen (email: