Curr Psychol (2010) 29:235–246 Compliance 243 In line with our hypothesis and previous research on the FITD, the type of influence technique affected compliance rates (F (1, 54) = 5.83, p = .02). Inspection of the means showed that participants responding to a more cognitively demanding initial request were willing to donate more time to the student action group (M = 1.36, SD = .68) than participants who responded to the less demanding initial request (M = 1.04, SD = .19). Self-regulatory Resource Depletion In addition to the effect of type of influence technique on compliance, analysis of variance revealed a main effect on the extent of resource depletion as indicated by Stroop performance (F (1, 54) =4.88, p = .03). This effect showed that responding to a more demanding initial request produced higher levels of resource depletion than responding to an undemanding initial request. More specifically, the demanding initial request resulted in less correct answers on the Stroop task (M= 29.04, SD= 6.30) than the undemanding initial request (M =31.68, SD=.67). Mediation Analysis Finally, to determine whether the extent of resource depletion indeed mediated the impact of the FITD technique on compliance, we performed a mediation analysis (cf. Baron and Kenny 1986). The results of the analysis of variance reported earlier had established that the type of influence technique (the independent variable) affected compliance rates (the dependent variable) and the extent of resource depletion (the proposed mediator). A final regression analysis with compliance rates as criterion and type of influence technique (dummy coded) and extent of resource depletion (centered, see Aiken and West 1991) as predictors showed that the impact of resource depletion was significant (β =−.29, t(55) = −2.21, p <.03) whereas the previously significant effect of type of influence technique on compliance was reduced to non-significance (β = .23, t(55) =1.76, n.s.), thus indicating full mediation (Baron and Kenny 1986). Discussion The present results demonstrate that the roots of mindlessness endemic to social influence contexts, can be a property of the influence setting itself, rather than the product of some extraneous factor. Earlier findings had already yielded support for the notion that mindlessness is an essential condition for influence scripts to “work” and affect consumer compliance (Cialdini 1993). We showed that it is the act of actively responding to the initial request phase of a sequential request technique that creates this state of increased susceptibility to influence. More specifically, the present results corroborate the notion that once a target of influence agrees to be exposed to the initial request phase, he/she opens the door to succumbing to the